


True Love's Kiss

by Anonymous



Category: Maleficent (2014), X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Anal Sex, Archery, Betrayal, Chess, Fae & Fairies, First Kiss, First Time, Homophobia, Inspired by Art, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Sleeping Beauty Elements, Underage Drinking, X-Men Reverse Big Bang Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 23:03:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and his siblings are orphaned fairy children living in the magic land of Genosha when Erik is betrayed and maimed by the human boy he thought cared about him. After the boy is crowned king of neighboring Westchester, Erik has his revenge by cursing the king’s son, Prince Charles, to sleep forever unless the impossible happens - but after 15 years he discovers that he cares about the boy a little too much. </p><p>(Pastiche with Disney’s Maleficent.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sebastian

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art Master Post: True Love's Kiss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265925) by [avictoriangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avictoriangirl/pseuds/avictoriangirl). 



> Inspired by artwork created by the lovely avictoriangirl! Beta'd by the fantastic endingthemes!

Around six hundred years ago, give or take a century, one of the last remaining pockets of fairy folk lived in part of what is now called Scotland. This small tribe of fae folk called their land Genosha, and it bordered a human kingdom called Westchester. Relations between the denizens of the two lands were strained, as each had a tendency to paint the other as the villain. By the time four fairy children were just starting to reach puberty no human or fairy folk from either of the two domains had actually talked to each other for a dozen years, and each starred as the monsters in each other's stories. 

Erik was the eldest fairy brother. He had dark auburn hair, cheek bones so sharp they could almost cut, and a pair of thick horns winding out of the top of his head. However, none of those things were even his most prominent features; all anyone could see, upon meeting him, were the powerfully muscled and feather-covered wings that sprouted out of his shoulders. 

When their parents died, together (as fairy couples do) just after the birth of his youngest brother, Erik took it upon himself to be the protector for his younger siblings: Alex, Angel, and Sean. He wasn't really an appropriate parent figure, as he was only a few years older than his next younger brother, Alex, but since the fairy siblings were also cared for by the gentle blue-furred beast Hank (whose age nobody knew, but based on how much he liked tea and reading he was presumed to be very old) they did not want for guidance. Erik got to be very good at taking care of his younger brothers and sister, but taking on that role made him feel a little distant from them and their childish quarrels, and frequently lonely.

One autumn day Erik was flying across Genosha, just enjoying the feel of his strong wings catching the air, when he spotted an unfamiliar figure walking on the ground. He flew closer to the figure to get a better view, and was almost shocked out of the sky to discover the figure was a human boy, not much older than himself. 

Erik flew still closer, curious. The boy saw him and even at the distance he was, Erik saw the boy's face pale in fear. The boy leaned down and scooped up some rocks, which he started throwing at Erik. 

Erik dodged the projectiles easily, although he was both annoyed and disappointed at the activity. "Why are you doing that?" he called to the boy.

"Because fairies hate humans," the boy yelled, still throwing rocks. 

"I heard that humans hate fairies," Erik called back. One of the rocks hit his shoulder and his left side faltered. He didn't exactly crash land, but he hit the ground harder and with considerably less aplomb than he would have hoped for. He staggered a few feet before recovering his composure. 

The boy was staring at him, still pale, not quite trembling, but Erik did see him swallow, hard. He hadn't thrown any more rocks since Erik had landed, but he had one in his hand and ready to throw. Erik stopped and stood about fifteen feet away from him. Closer, he could tell that the boy was probably fourteen years old, perhaps two years older than Erik himself. 

"What are you doing here?" Erik asked. He hadn't seen a human before. He'd heard about them, and everything he'd heard was...bad. It hadn't really occurred to him that some humans weren’t adults. The human monsters in the fairy stories were never children.

"I'm just trying to get to the castle," the teenager said, and then corrected himself. "I mean, I am going to the castle."

Erik took a few steps closer. He was curious about the young man. The other watched him warily but did not throw any more rocks. 

"What's it like to fly?" the human blurted out suddenly.

Erik was taken aback. "To fly? It's...amazing." Erik saw the boy staring at his wings and the hand holding the rock lowered. Erik cautiously spread his wings to their full width and watched the boy’s eyes get as big as saucers. 

"Beautiful," he breathed.

Erik felt his cheeks flushing a little. He wasn't used to being admired. His wings were different from a lot of other fairies, who had wispy, fragile things, like his sister Angel. Erik's strong wings had been a gift from his parents - strong wings to control his strong magic, they told him when he was very young. He wasn't sure how much of that was real and how much was a bedtime story, though. 

The boy took a few bold steps towards Erik's wings with an arm outstretched and Erik reflexively retracted them and took a step back. The boy looked rebuked. "I just wanted to..." he trailed off, looking at Erik uncertainly. "I wasn't going to hurt you."

"And I'm not afraid of you," Erik said, thinking it was mostly true. "But why should I trust you, when you were throwing rocks at me earlier?"

"I--wanted to scare you away," the boy admitted, his cheeks pink as he rubbed at the ground with the toe of his shoe. "I thought you were...like an animal."

Erik was silent a moment, thinking about this. He didn't really bear any ill will towards the boy, but he felt like he should. "You know you shouldn't be here."

"I know," the boy snapped suddenly, the flash of anger leaving his face as quickly as it had come. "I got--turned around. I'm leaving now." He turned as if to go, and hesitated, scanning his surroundings. A few uncomfortable minutes passed during which neither boy moved or said anything, although the human boy was still obviously looking for something nearby.

Erik couldn't stifle his own curiosity. "What are you looking for?" he asked. 

The young man's mouth tightened like he didn't want to answer, but after a moment he did. "A black vein of rock in the ground."

Erik started looking around too, only to find that he was standing directly on top of it, his wings obscuring it from view. He moved aside and gestured for the boy to look at the vein. The boy's eyebrows jumped and he looked at the angle of the sun in the sky and started following the vein of rock to the east. Erik trailed him, not able to subsume his curiosity, although he told himself he was keeping an eye on the human for the safety of the fae folk. 

"Then through the tree," the boy muttered to himself, apparently completely unaware that Erik could hear him. He walked up to a huge tree on a steep slope that had been dead for many years, and whose base was covered with leaves and forest debris. Erik followed the boy into the large base of the tree where there was just enough room for both of them to stand before the boy noticed Erik was still there. He jumped a little, standing in the burned-out hollow, staying close to Erik because there wasn't enough room to stand apart. 

"You shouldn't see this. It's a secret," the boy said and then his eyes widened when he realized what he said. 

Erik couldn't help smiling a little - the boy's facial expression was comical. "Not anymore it’s not," Erik pointed out with a smirk.

The boy grasped his arm. "No, really," he said with intensity. "You can't come through here." Once his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the base of the tree, Erik saw that there was a tunnel leading into the ground opposite the way they’d come in. Not large, but big enough for a man. Probably not big enough for Erik, he thought, considering the size of his wings and horns. 

"Okay, fine," Erik said, yanking his arm away. “I can’t fit in there, anyway.” The boy was still standing there, clearly waiting for Erik to leave. Erik was intrigued by him and his secrets, and he didn't really want the boy to go.

"Are you going to come back?" he said finally.

The boy frowned in confusion. "You want me to?"

"Well, yes. I mean, if you want to." Erik shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. 

The boy contemplated. "Could I fly with you?"

"I don't know," Erik said honestly. "I could try."

The boy grinned at him and stuck out his hand, a gesture that was confusing to Erik. "My name's Sebastian." 

Erik looked at the hand, puzzled. "I'm Erik." Sebastian saw where he was looking and he slowly reached out to Erik's right hand and grasped it in a handshake. Erik jumped a bit. _So this is what touching a human feels like,_ he thought. It didn't actually feel that different from touching fae folk.

Sebastian released his hand. "I'll come back soon," he said. 

It was the first lie he told Erik; he didn't return for five months. 

**

When Sebastian did return, it was early spring. Erik and his siblings were gathering apples next to a pond when Erik felt a funny prickle on the back of his neck. He looked around and saw Sebastian, crouched in the bushes, watching him.

"Hi!" he called, landing and walking over to the boy. Sebastian shyly came out of the bushes. Erik could hear Angel and Sean whispering behind him but he paid them no mind. 

"I'm glad you came back," Erik said. 

Sebastian swallowed, looking from Erik to his siblings behind him. If Erik knew Alex, he was probably scowling something fierce right now. "I didn't know if you'd remember me," Sebastian said after a slightly awkward pause. 

"Of course I remember you," Erik said, surprised. "You're the only human I've ever met."

"He's _human_?" Erik heard someone mutter, and then he could hear Angel and Sean flying around behind him in distress. He turned around to scowl at them and they scowled right back. 

"This is Sebastian," Erik said, turning to face Alex, who was the only one of his siblings who was holding still, not having the ability to fly the way Angel and Sean could. 

Erik was peppered with a million questions about how he had met Sebastian and he patiently answered all of their questions. He had actually told them about the encounter right after it happened but they apparently hadn't believed him. Not that Erik was prone to telling tales - although his siblings were.

By the time the fairies believed Erik and had introduced themselves to Sebastian, the human had relaxed, sitting cross-legged on the ground, peeling a blade of grass. 

"So..." Erik wasn't sure what to say to Sebastian. "How have you been?"

"Fine, thanks," Sebastian responded automatically. He looked up at Erik. "I actually thought a lot about you."

"You did?" Erik had thought a lot about Sebastian, too, but he decided not to say that. "Why?"

Sebastian shrugged and looked back down at the blade of grass he was fiddling with. "Your wings, I guess." 

"My wings?" Erik didn't know how to feel about that. They were part of him, and he actually thought they were his best feature, but for some reason he wished Sebastian had said something else. He spread out the wings in question. They were bigger than they had been the last time they'd seen each other. 

Sebastian's face was overcome with the same look of wonder he'd had the first time he'd seen Erik spread his wings like that. He stood up slowly and walked towards Erik, stretching one hand out to stroke the feathers on one wing. Erik shivered at the light touch, despite feeling a new warmth curling deep in his abdomen.

"Can I fly with you?" Sebastian asked. 

Erik hesitated. "What do you mean?"

"Well, could you...I don't know--carry me? Maybe on your back, or in your arms?"

Erik contemplated this for a long moment. "You would get in the way on my back, and I don't think I'm strong enough anyway."

"You can just say if you don't want to," Sebastian said, with an edge in his voice.

Erik started to protest, but he was interrupted by Angel's grinning face as it appeared between him and Sebastian. "Hey! Let's play a game with your new friend!"

Angel, Sean, and Alex all looked at Erik expectantly. "Sure," he said. "If Sebastian wants to." 

"Yeah, okay," said the human boy, turning to look at the fairies. "What game?"

"It's called: Try Not To Fall In The Pond," Sean said mischieviously, before he made a sweeping turn in his flight path and pushed the boy into the pond. 

"Sean!" Erik snapped. He waded into the pond and offered Sebastian a hand to help him up. Sebastian came out looking annoyed and shivering slightly. 

"Sean's in trouble, Sean's in trouble," Alex and Angel chanted. 

"Apologize to Sebastian," Erik demanded of Sean.

Sean rolled his eyes and said, "Human Sebastian, will you accept my apology for letting you fall in the pond?"

"Let him fall? You totally pushed him," Alex exclaimed as Angel made noises of agreement. 

Sebastian's jaw was chattering too much for him to be able to speak clearly. "It's f-f-f-fine." It was late in the afternoon in the early spring, and the temperature was dropping quickly.

Erik felt his natural protectiveness, usually directed towards his siblings, extend itself to the drenched boy standing in front of him. "We're going to Hank's," he snapped. Giant, blue-furred Hank had a cozy home he had dug out of the soft earth, so it was mostly underground and stayed warmer than the outside. The fairies would often stay at Hank’s when the weather was not conducive to sleeping outside in the tree, where they usually slept.

Angel and Sean flew ahead while Alex ran with them. Erik walked next to Sebastian, and after a moment, awkwardly put his wing up and around Sebastian enough to provide a little shelter from the chilly wind. Even though Sebastian was older, he and Erik were about the same height, Erik noticed. He wasn’t sure why he did notice. As a winged creature who spent most of his time in the air, his relative height was of very little concern to him, usually.

Sebastian didn't say anything, but he moved closer into Erik as they walked, seeking out his heat. Erik was shirtless, or he would have offered his shirt to Sebastian. Erik wore soft breeches but in the summer he rarely wore shirts - being cold was not much of a problem for the fae folk, unless it was _extremely_ cold. 

They got to Hank's just as the sun was setting. The fairies had let Hank know they were coming, and Hank had a blanket and a pot of tea ready when Erik and Sebastian walked up. 

"Oh dear," said the beast, frowning at Sebastian. "A human."

"A human who is freezing to death, thanks to Sean," Erik snapped defensively. 

Beast blinked at him and then looked back at Erik, who was wearing his most beseeching expression. Hank sighed after a moment. "Very well, come inside." 

Erik gestured for Sebastian to enter the round door first, and Sebastian did, hesitantly, looking up at Hank warily. Hank had a roaring fire built and since the ceiling was not quite tall enough for Sebastian to stand, he sank down gratefully into the pile of furs next to the fire. 

Erik entered carefully behind Sebastian. It was hard for him to enter Hank's hobbit home because of how much space his wings and horns took up, but it was possible if he was careful. This close to the fire the small space necessitated that the only place for him to be, though, was right behind Sebastian on his side, slightly curled around the sitting boy. 

Hank didn't comment as he passed Sebastian a cup of tea. Sebastian murmured "Thank you," as he took it, and Erik was happy to see him shivering less. 

The three of them sat inside silently, Hank reading a book over wire-rimmed glasses, Erik just watching the fire, on his side with his head propped up on his arm, and Sebastian struggling to stay awake. Erik had thought his siblings might try and squeeze inside the burrow home, too, but he could hear them outside, whooping and playing. 

Sebastian drooped against him, as he nodded off, and then straightened with a jerk. "Sorry," he muttered. 

"It's fine," Erik said, not sure why Sebastian was apologizing. Erik usually slept in a pile with his brothers and sister. 

In fact, Erik was feeling a little tired himself. "You can lie down, if you want," he told Sebastian. "I'm going to fall asleep soon too, I think."

"But..." Sebastian's objection died on his lips as drowsiness took over and he reluctantly lay on his side, fitting himself inside the curl of Erik’s body. Erik moved one of his wings over both of them for warmth and Sebastian sighed and snuggled closer. Erik fell asleep to the not-entirely-unpleasant smell of pond-wet human hair. 

**

Sebastian visited more frequently over the next few years. He took to bringing little gifts from his people, the humans in the village: small leather pouches, human food items, a wooden spoon, a tiny knife. Erik wasn't really interested in getting gifts, but Angel, Sean, and Alex were, and they eagerly looked forward to his visits and would bicker over the things Sebastian brought them. 

Despite the fact that Erik declined to keep any gifts, it was obvious that Erik was the reason Sebastian kept returning; the young human was drawn to the oldest fairy brother. Sebastian touched and smiled at Erik frequently and Erik found himself filled with a peculiar kind of tension when he did so--a not unpleasant feeling. It made him want...something else, something more, from the older boy, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what that was. Unfortunately, Sebastian also had a temper, and as often as he could be generous and affectionate he could be also be rude and cruel. He always apologized, though, and then he would bring gifts to Erik’s fairy siblings, and Erik would inevitably forgive him.

Most of the times that Sebastian was unpleasant to Erik it had to do with the fact that Sebastian wanted desperately to fly. He watched Erik and his siblings with veiled and sometimes outright envy. Erik tried, more than once, to lift Sebastian into the air with him by embracing the (now shorter) young man from behind and flapping his wings for all he was worth--but Erik simply could not generate the strength required to lift them both off the ground. Sebastian seemed to think it was something he did on purpose, no matter how much Erik protested that it wasn’t. 

One day when Erik was sixteen, he had reluctantly agreed after much pleading from Sebastian to try flying with him again. Erik wrapped his arms around Sebastian and realized just how firm the other man felt against him--how had he not noticed that before? Erik felt the beginnings of an erection as he strained to lift the other boy and he immediately pushed the human away, his face red. 

“You’re not even going to try now?” Sebastian said angrily. “Fine, fine, I--” Sebastian stopped, dead silent, his eyes staring at Erik’s crotch. Erik knew what he had seen and was mortified. He took a step back and stumbled awkwardly, almost falling, before he turned away and leaped into the air and flew strongly back to the tree that he spent most of his time in when he wasn’t doing other things, his long hair flowing behind him. He heard Sebastian calling him but his face burned and he kept flying.

It was three weeks before Erik saw Sebastian again, and even then he only reluctantly came out of his tree after Alex pushed him. 

“Hi,” said Sebastian. He swallowed nervously and shifted from foot to foot, his cheeks pinker than usual. “I brought you something.”

“You know I don’t want your gifts,” Erik said, and then immediately wanted to take the words back, feeling they were too harsh. “I mean...you didn’t have to bring me anything.”

“Well, Angel and Alex and Sean are too young for this,” Sebastian said, with a slight smile. He held up a leather bag of liquid. “Although, technically, you are too.”

“I’m an adult,” Erik protested. 

Sebastian frowned. “You are? I thought you were sixteen.” 

“Well, yes, but that’s adult in Genosha.” 

“Oh.” Sebastian took a cautious step towards Erik, who was in fact still considering bolting. “That’s good, then. You can drink this.” He held out the skin.

Curiosity overcame the memory of his recent embarrassment and Erik took the skin from Sebastian and sniffed cautiously. It smelled tangy and alcoholic. “What is it?” 

“Wine.” Sebastian took the skin back with a grin and squirted some into his mouth. “Have you ever had any?”

Erik shook his head. He’d heard of wine, but mead was a more common alcoholic beverage among the fae folk, and he’d only tasted mead a couple times. He accepted the skin back and tentatively squirted some of the burgundy liquid into his mouth the way Sebastian did, and almost immediately choked at the strong flavor. About half the wine flew out of his mouth.

Sebastian laughed, not unkindly, and looked at Erik with affection. He stepped close to Erik and used his sleeve to wipe some wine off Erik’s chin. Erik barely breathed as Sebastian stood close to him, the young human’s smile slowly fading as a different expression took over his face. “I was thinking…” he trailed off, his eyes roving down Erik’s chin to his shoulders and of course to his wings. “I was thinking we could try some things. If you want.”

Erik heart rate sped up. “What kind of things?”

Sebastian shrugged and reached out to stroke Erik’s wing absent-mindedly. “Maybe things that will help…” he shook his head and looked Erik with a suggestive smile. “Are there any--things--you would like to do?”

Erik stared at Sebastian, his mouth dry. He didn’t know how to answer that--didn’t know what he wanted. He noticed he was still holding the wine skin and he squirted a healthy amount into his mouth and managed to catch it all that time, since he then knew what flavor to expect.

**

An hour later found the two young men sitting around a fire, both drunk. Erik's siblings had been herded off to bed hours earlier, and Sebastian had suggested that he and Erik should make a fire a good distance away from the copse of trees where his siblings slept. Erik was laughing about something ridiculous -- maybe it was Sebastian’s impression of a man he called Old King Frost -- when he found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss Sebastian. 

“What are you thinking about?” Sebastian said softly, his laughter fading out. 

Erik chewed on his bottom lip. “I wish you could fly with me,” he said finally, regretfully. He knew it was like stoking the fire to talk about that, but it was the first thing he could think of that wasn’t what he had actually been thinking.

But Sebastian seemed pleased with his answer. “I’ve been thinking that maybe you need the right motivation,” Sebastian said, boldly moving to sit right next to Erik on the rock Erik was sitting on. “To have the strength to lift me, I mean.”

Erik’s mouth had gone dry again, but his mind was also spinning from the wine. “Motivation,” he repeated, not sure exactly what Sebastian was getting at and not wanting to betray his ignorance.

“Is there something that would--motivate you, Erik?” Sebastian put a hand on Erik’s knee. Erik looked at the hand on him and tried to find words that would fit the context of the conversation - even though he wasn’t entirely sure what that context was.

“My parents used to say that love is the most powerful motivation there is,” said Erik after a moment, and then immediately felt his cheeks flame, realizing how childish that sounded. 

Sebastian looked surprised, but he smothered it quickly. “Oh? Yes, yes of course. I--” he hesitated. “I can do that.”

“You can do what?” Erik asked, confused, his head buzzing. 

“You said--you want love,” Sebastian said softly. It was half a question and half a statement. He moved so he was kneeling in front of Erik. “I can do that. I can--” his face brightened, like he had just realized, or thought of, something. “I can prove it to you. I can give you True Love’s Kiss.”

Erik felt all the blood in his body rush to his head. He stared at Sebastian’s lips and nodded, not trusting his voice. He leaned forward slightly and closed his eyes as Sebastian’s lips met his. 

It was--awkward. Not that Erik had ever kissed anyone before, but even given that and the fact that he was drunk, Sebastian’s kissing technique could only be described as “trying too hard.”

Erik pulled back when he had taken as much as he could stand and Sebastian pulled back quickly too, seeming relieved. “There,” he said breathlessly. “Love.”

Erik tried to understand what was happening. Was Sebastian in love with him? 

“How do you feel?” Sebastian whispered.

“Dizzy,” Erik replied honestly. 

“Yes, that’s love,” Sebastian said with authority that made Erik snort, even as drunk and confused as he was. Sebastian pulled his face back from Erik’s and stroked his cheek. “But do you feel stronger?”

Erik saw where this was going. “Strong enough to carry you while I fly, you mean.”

Sebastian’s breathing changed, just a little. “Yes.”

Erik stood up and immediately sat back down again. The second time he was able to stand up and stay up, although he did sway a bit. “Let’s find out.”

Sebastian grinned, a wide beautiful expression that made Erik want to forgive him for the terrible kiss. He turned around facing away from Erik and pulled Erik’s arms under his and wrapped them up over his shoulders. “Ready. My...love.”

Erik believed. This time it would work. He launched himself off the ground with a powerful push of his legs, and then they were soaring--

No, they weren’t. They had fallen over in a heap and Sebastian was cursing at him and pushing at him to get off him. Erik rolled off and Sebastian rolled with him, aiming a punch at Erik’s jaw. Erik saw stars and his head snapped up and back and he choked out, “Sebastian, what--” as another punch slammed his head into the rock the two of them had been sitting on. The world went black around the edges of Erik’s vision, but he did barely manage to hold on to his consciousness. 

“Gods, I can’t believe I actually _kissed_ you, you--you-- _fairy_ , and it didn’t fucking work.” Sebastian grasped Erik by the horns on his head and pulled their faces close together. He spoke angrily to Erik’s dazed countenance. “Why wouldn’t you just fly with me? Gods, Erik, that’s all I ever wanted. All this ‘love’ bullshit...a human can’t love a fairy, you fool. But, you know what, fuck you. Fuck all this wasted time. If I can’t fly...you can’t fly.” Sebastian dropped Erik’s head and it struck the rock again, this time hard enough that he did pass out. 

**

Erik woke at dawn lying on his stomach and knew immediately that something was very, very wrong. He thought he remembered the night before, but after Sebastian had hit him, everything was blurry except for the memory of intense pain. He had a splitting headache and he was cold, and he never felt cold. He also felt lighter, and there was an unusual ache coming from his back, and he couldn’t feel his---

Erik rolled in a way he shouldn’t have been able to, his heart thudding in a panic. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe this was the worst nightmare he’d ever had. He couldn’t even bring himself to think the words that part of him had realized immediately were true: _his wings were gone._

Erik stood up and tried to unfold his wings, to stretch them, to reach for the wind that would carry him up and away from this agony, but his body’s only response was shooting pain from the bloody stumps high on his back. 

He fell to his knees and a primal scream ripped out of him. He could barely begin to wrap his mind around the enormity of what had he had lost--what had been taken from him. His body continued to react even as his mind dissociated from what was happening physically - he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes as he sobbed loudly, unashamed of who might hear, thinking nothing but _this can’t be happening_.

He cried until he had no tears left, until only the occasional dry sob wracked his body. He felt everything had left with his tears: all possible joy, anything that had motivated him in life. He lay in the dirt as the sun rose higher in the sky, unable to find a reason to do anything else. The wounds on his back itched and he was vaguely aware of a raven circling above him, probably waiting for him to die so it could eat his carcass. Erik's siblings approached him after a while, terrified, and he snarled at them wordlessly until they left in fear. He knew they were going to get Hank and he forced himself to crawl away and roll under a bush. He didn't want to be found; he didn't want to have to explain his shame. 

When Hank and his siblings came back for him, Erik made no noise, and the dirt he was covered in from crawling and rolling under the bush effectively obscured his appearance and his scent so that even though they spent several hours looking for him, they could not find him. Around sunset they all headed back to Hank's home, obviously distressed. 

Erik didn't care. He couldn't bear seeing them pity him now that he was crippled. He didn't care if he lived at all. He let the night come, invisible to all creatures except that same Raven, which landed a few feet away from him and cocked its head at him like it saw him. He growled at it and it cawed loudly and then flew away. 

The sun came up again, and Erik moved only enough to relieve himself and then rolled a few feet away. He was filthy, his formerly beautiful long hair covered in grit and twigs. His lips were cracked and parched. He wondered how long it would take him to die of dehydration. 

He was dozing, nigh delirious, in the early afternoon when something dropped on his face. Erik squinted and jerked his head the side instinctively and the thing slid to the side. Erik opened his eyes and tried to force his eyes to focus and recognize the blurry pale purple globes.

Grapes. A bunch of grapes.

Erik stared, and looked up. There was no one there but that raven, circling above him. It landed a few feet away and cocked its head at him.

Erik still wanted to die, but his throat was parched and the grapes looked plump and irresistible. He stretched a cramped, protesting arm to grasp the fruit and put three in his mouth. He almost choked on the burst of liquid flavor. 

The raven cawed loudly. 

"I hope you don't expect me to thank you," Erik muttered. His voice was raw and rusty. As far as he was concerned his life had only been extended by another day or two. He finished the grapes and glared at the raven. 

**

The next day, it was a fish that landed on his face. He snarled and threw it at the black blur circling above him. "Leave me alone!" he yelled. He looked for the raven but didn't see it. He thought that perhaps he had actually hit the bird and felt both a grim satisfaction and a stab of guilt at the thought. 

Erik stayed in his bush but awake the rest of that day, looking for the raven. His annoyance with the bird sparked white-hot within him, an odd relief from the physical and emotional pain Sebastian had put him through. 

The next day, he was awakened by a dead field mouse being dropped on his face.

Erik saw red. "That's _it_ ," he snarled, leaping to his feet. He was going to kill that fucking raven.

He saw it, flying ahead of him, heading east towards the rising sun. He set off after it, angry and determined until the thought of how fast he would catch it if he had his wings crossed his mind. Erik stumbled and almost fell as he felt like he got punched in the gut by a combination of hurt, betrayal, shame, and pain. He slowed and was almost stopped again when he saw the raven flutter almost within arm's reach. He leaped for it, unconsciously trying to take flight--

And found himself splashing into a pond, the water about waist-deep. The same pond, in fact, into which Sean had pushed Sebastian almost four years previously. Erik screamed with fury at the raven which was still flying above him, now cawing loudly. Anger at everything filled him. His pain, his shame, and Sebastian's betrayal became swallowed up by a white-hot current of emotion--anger that the raven had spearheaded. 

Erik stayed in the water, his eyes tracking the bird. The shock of the cold water and the realization that there was a choice other than pain, apathy, and eventual death stilled his tongue. He breathed heavily and wondered if he was going crazy, ascribing motivations to a dumb animal, or if the raven really was interfering with his life as much as he assumed. He wondered if he should be thanking it instead of pursuing it. He wondered why it had taken the prodding of the raven for his pain and misery over what Sebastian had done to him to become anger.

As Erik contemplated the black bird, while having this epiphany, and he saw a net fly over the raven and drag it down out of his sight. The bird squawked loudly and indignantly and Erik couldn't see what was happening to it. He froze as he heard a gravelly male voice and his heart thudded even as his mind processed _not Sebastian._

"Gonna eat well tonight," he heard clearly, along with some muttering about eating crow. Trepidation shot through Erik as he scrambled to the bank of the pond. He crept on his belly towards the squawking bird and saw a burly hunter with a odd hair configuration approaching the raven with a knife. 

In a panic, without thought of why or how, Erik lashed out with the only weapon he had--magic. He had a vague idea to change the raven into something that would scare the hunter away, but as the magic arced out of his fingers he realized it was way too strong and he felt his stomach clench in anxiety that he might have just killed the raven. Although--wasn't that what he had been trying to do just a few minutes before?

The hunter stopped approaching the animal under the net abruptly. "What the hell..." he breathed, as a grime-covered _human woman_ crouched in the net. 

"What the _fuck_?" she screamed.

The hunter took a step back in alarm. "Where did--how--"

"He did this, didn't he? That selfish _bastard_." She stood up. She was so utterly filthy, it was impossible to tell if she was wearing clothing or not. 

The hunter was slowly shaking his head. "Look, lady, I don't know how the hell you got under that net, but--"

" _You_ put me here, you drooling imbecile," the raven-woman snapped, throwing the net off distractedly and glaring around her at the bushes. "I know he's here somewhere."

"...I did? How--who--"

"Get _out_ of here," Raven screamed at the hunter. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it was bad luck to eat crow? Don't try it again!"

The hunter took a step backwards and scowled at her, stalking off and clearly trying to make it look like it was his idea in the first place. 

Erik watched from the bushes. He was oddly relieved he hadn't killed the raven, yet was also smugly pleased at how annoyed she seemed to be about the whole situation. 

"Erik. You've had your fun. Come out." She seemed less angry now, and a little bit scared. _Good_ , thought Erik. He stayed put. 

She waited for some response, and when there was none, after a minute she sighed. "You know I was just trying to keep you alive." 

Erik contemplated that and realized it was true, and that the raven didn't deserve to be stuck in an unfamiliar form merely for that crime. 

But without his wings to focus his magic, he might really hurt her this time if he tried to change her again. 

Erik struggled with the dilemma and decided that he couldn't attempt to change her back without warning her of the potential risks, in case she decided it wasn't worth it. And he also couldn't just slink off and leave her without an explanation; he felt that he owed her more than that. 

He rose from his crouching position and approached her slowly. She heard a twig break and spun around to see him behind her. She exhaled carefully. "I think the field mouse may have been a bit much," she admitted. 

"You think?" Erik said dryly, crossing his arms. 

Her eyes narrowed. "Did it justify--this?" she said, spreading her arms to indicate her human body. 

" _This_ just saved your life," Erik pointed out. 

She rolled her eyes. "If you say so. I would have gotten away."

Erik gave her a disbelieving look. 

She sighed. "Just change me back?"

Erik grimaced. "I--I don't know if I can. I don't have good--control." Erik didn't want to explain about his wings and how they helped focus his power. Not now, while the wound was literally still too raw.

"Well, I--" Raven suddenly turned back into a raven again. She squawked in surprise and abruptly she was human again, but her face was shining. 

"It's me!" she crowed. " _I can change shapes_! I can pick what shape I want to be and, _bam_ , then I am." She was grinning wide. 

"You're welcome," Erik said casually.

"Oh, I..." Raven looked at Erik thoughtfully. "I guess I really _should_ thank you. So, uh, maybe now we can call it even? I mean with all the delicious dead animals I threw at you?"

Erik frowned. "I don't think that makes us even."

Raven was frowning then, too. "Well, what do you expect from me?"

Erik contemplated this, and realized there was a way she could be useful to him. "Serve me."

Raven stared at him for about five seconds and then burst out laughing. "Good luck with _that_ ," she said.

Erik set his jaw and turned his back on her, ready to go back into the undergrowth. 

"Erik, wait," the woman said. "I--I'm not going to _serve_ you, because that's ridiculous, but...you don't have to leave." 

Erik slowed but did not stop. The raven-woman followed him as he picked through the shrubbery. "What did you mean by serve you, anyway?" she said after a few minutes. "You don't seem the type to want a servant."

"How do you know what type I am," Erik snapped irritably. His comment had the additional goal of deflecting her question. He knew what he wanted from her, but he couldn't talk about it. Not yet. 

"I saw what happened, you know," so said softly after a few more minutes of following him as he went--where? He didn't know where he was going. He didn't have anyplace to be. Erik's jaw tightened and he started to walk faster.

"What that human did--" Raven started and then stopped with wide eyes and Erik turned around with his teeth bared ferociously, grasping her throat in his hand.

"Don't!" he snarled, spittle flying from his mouth as he stood facing her, breathing hard. She swallowed and wisely did not respond. Erik looked her in the eye but looked away before the fear and shock in her eyes at his reaction could turn to pity. He abruptly released her throat and let his arms dangle at his side. She watched him warily. 

"I want you to be my wings," he said finally. He knew he should probably explain more but he couldn't. 

She cocked her head as she studied him, evoking her bird form, eyes curious and assessing. After a moment she gave him a curt nod. 

Erik turned to continue walking and realized they had reached what had been his subconscious destination all along: the tree that hid Sebastian's secret path back to his castle. His body clenched with rage but instead of howling and thrashing as he wanted to, he only gritted his teeth and waited for the waves of anger to cool. 

Raven just stood a little ways behind him, still in human form, watching him. "I need to know where he is," Erik said. The words felt like they had been ripped out of him. But Raven just nodded and changed into her original form and took flight towards the east, towards Westchester.

Erik thought about leaving, about hiding from the Raven, about crawling back under a bush to die. But the desperate, sick curiosity about what in the world Sebastian could be doing after he destroyed Erik's life kept him nearby, waiting to hear what she found out. 

**

"Really, you're going to have to start getting your own food."

Erik awoke with a start. It was well after dark and Raven was back and standing over him. She was much cleaner and wearing a human dress. She had a bag with her too, which she was rummaging in.

Erik rubbed his eyes blearily as she presented him with a small loaf of bread. He accepted it, puzzled, and looked at her again. "You went to the village?"

She shrugged, taking a loaf for herself out of the bag and plopping down next to Erik. "I was curious. Their food is good." She bit off a hunk of bread and spoke around it. "I had to walk back instead of fly because I had this bag - that's why it took me so long."

Erik didn't comment, crouched and eating his bread. He waited for her to say more but she didn't. Finally he cleared his throat. "Did you see--him?"

She didn't respond for a moment, and he couldn't see her face in the darkness, so he said sharply, "Raven."

"I saw him," she said quietly. "He was at the castle. The talk...they are saying that he killed a fierce beast in Genosha, and brought back a trophy. And he is courting King Frost's daughter, Emma, and he is expected to be chosen as the King's successor."

With every word she said, Erik felt himself shrinking. He was nothing, a bug, a gnat, and Sebastian was going to be fucking king. 

Raven chanced a glance at Erik. "I also brought mead," she said, almost apologetically. 

Erik held his hand out for the container without looking at her. As he drank it, he realized the warmth in his stomach might be from more than just the mead. Despite that it stung to hear how well Sebastian was doing, at least now Erik felt like he had an ally in Raven.

**

Days turned into weeks turned into months and Erik did not feel any need to return to his family. It's not that he didn't care about them, but the longer he stayed away the guiltier he felt for staying away and he rationalized that they were almost out of childhood and anyway they had Hank. Instead, Erik learned how to live as a land-bound creature. He did not use his magic much because he could not control it, although when he was angry sometimes things got fried or cursed. Erik became a meat-eater like humans and Raven, hunting fish and small game with a spear he had made. Most fairy folk did not eat meat, preferring to eats nuts and roots and fruits, but Erik found that he enjoyed the challenge of hunting. 

He found that a part of him enjoyed the killing part, even. 

Raven didn't comment on his continued absence from his family or his newfound pleasure in hunting. She spent quite a lot of time in her bird form, but also would keep him company in a human form. She frequently flew to the castle and spied on Sebastian for him; Erik heard that Sebastian Shaw was betrothed to Emma Frost, and then heard about their wedding, and then how the passing of old King Frost led to Shaw being crowned king of Westchester. 

Every bit of news hardened Erik. Any affection he'd had for Sebastian had long since dried and blackened inside him, leaving only pain and a barely-contained rage. However, the cold anger running through him then made his magic easier to focus, even if he did sometimes overshoot his mark. 

News of the White Queen's pregnancy gave him the fuel to take down a tree. News of the child's birth and he was able to kill all the plant life in his immediate vicinity. When he heard from Raven that his fairy siblings had been invited to a party in the child's honor, though, he lost a little bit of focus. 

"Why would he invite them?" He snarled at the bird-woman, after he nearly cursed her accidentally. "Have they all remained-- _friends_?" He said the last word with a curled lip and a bitter tone. Humans and fairies hadn’t been friendly for hundreds of years; to think that someone like Sebastian was responsible for improving relations between the races was repulsive to Erik.

"That’s what I gather, “ Raven said carefully. “Or, maybe they just wanted blessings for their son.” The curse she had narrowly avoided had caught a frog instead, which had promptly swelled up and exploded. She had good reason to be cautious of Erik. "They seem to believe fairy magic can protect him."

Erik snorted. "Fat lot of good it did me." He paced. He was angry, in a hot way he hadn't felt in a long time, because at the core of it was hurt and the oh-so-childish pain of feeling snubbed. He could hardly blame his siblings for remaining friendly with Sebastian when he’d never told them what the man did, but Erik had expected loyalty from them anyway. And, he couldn't tolerate this from Sebastian any longer without doing something about it. He had been idly listening to Raven's reports for over a year without taking any action, without sending any kind of message to Shaw to tell him that Erik was alive, that Erik _fucking mattered_ and--

It wasn't until it registered in Erik's mind that Raven had transformed into some armored animal like an armadillo that Erik realized he was muttering while he paced like a madman. He slowed down and tried to focus his thoughts before they got away from him again and he inadvertently blew something else up. "I'm going to that party," he told Raven suddenly. "I will have my revenge on Shaw by cursing his child."

Raven transformed back into a human and looked at him doubtfully. "A baby? It's not the baby's fault," she said reasonably, but Erik just growled at her. 

Raven knew him well enough by now to know that Erik usually took her words into account, even if it didn't first appear that way. At least, she hoped he did.

It also occurred to her that she might be able to leverage this into accomplishing something else she'd been hoping Erik would do something about: his appearance. In the year or so since he had lost his wings, Erik had stopped grooming himself. His hair was long and wild, hanging in dirty dreadlocks around his horns, and his beard was nearly as bad. He only wore breeches as clothing, and those were torn and tattered and utterly filthy. Not to mention the smell.

Raven thought carefully about how to phrase her words. "You know, Erik, if you are going to go to this party, you should make a strong appearance. Don't let Shaw know--" Raven hesitated, not sure how to finish that sentence without enraging Erik. 

"I intend to make a strong appearance," Erik said, frowning. "By cursing his baby, as I said."

"No, I know, I mean..." Raven tried to think like Erik. "You have to appear like a party guest, or they will throw you out immediately, before you can get a chance to put your curse on the baby." Raven hoped the baby wouldn't explode.

Erik appeared to be mulling it over. Raven tried to make her point delicately. "The better you look, the worse he is going to feel," she finally said. 

Erik's green eyes snapped to her face and he stared at her intently as he contemplated her words. A few expressions flitted across his face before he said, almost reluctantly, "What did you have in mind?"

Raven beamed.

**

Raven found there was a lot she liked about the humans in the village. Not only did they have the delicious bread and cheese foods, and mead to calm Erik down, but she had found that human men were very willing to please her when she was in her human form - after she had cleaned up, anyway. That was what made her think that Erik would be in a better position with humans if he was cleaned up, too, and even if he didn't intend to befriend any humans it seemed like it wouldn't hurt for him to look a little more -- well, human. 

She had been around enough humans to know some of the clothing styles and she shamelessly stole some pieces that she thought would suit him. She also stole a very sharp knife as she was determined to give him a haircut and take off his facial hair too. Last but not least, she stole some soap and brought it to where he was waiting at the pond. 

Although he was obviously doubtful and uncomfortable with it, Erik followed Raven's directions to clean himself and he let her cut his hair and even shave his face, although his cheek muscle twitched with tension a couple times. 

When he was done and dried, standing naked in front of Raven, she felt her mouth go dry. By human standards, which Raven found herself sharing more and more, he was...very attractive. She all but threw the clothing she had stolen at him and quickly walked to where he wasn't in her line of sight. "Put those on," she yelled over her shoulder. 

Shaking his head at his friend's erratic behavior, Erik did his best to put the clothes on as they seemed to work. Raven came out then and adjusted a few things and took a step back to admire him. 

"Well?" he said testily. He had never worn clothes like this: a waistcoat in a maroon brocade and a snug long leather coat over the top. His head felt cold, as he could not ever remember having short hair before. But if it made Sebastian take notice--

"Shaw is going to feel like shit," she said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms. 

"Good."

**

To reach the castle, Erik used the old secret passageway hidden under the tree that Shaw had inadvertently told him about when they were children. Without his wings, he fit well enough, he noted with some bitterness, although he did have to do some careful maneuvering to make sure his horns didn’t get caught on anything. Raven accompanied him in her bird form, sometimes flapping ahead and sometime sitting on his shoulder as he carried a torch through the long underground tunnels that led to the castle. 

When he finally reached a heavy wooden door, he pushed it open easily and found himself in a basement. He found stairs and went up, following the sounds of merriment that only hardened his heart. 

When he arrived at the room in which the festivities were taking place, he hung back to take stock of the situation. Sebastian Shaw and his queen, Emma Frost, were seated side-by-side in thrones. They were both smiling and appeared happy. The baby's yellow bassinet was on a little pedestal to the side, sitting in--honestly--a ray of sunshine. Erik shook his head in disgust. He heard bickering and wasn't surprised (although he _was_ disappointed) to see his siblings Alex, Angel, and Sean there. They were bowing and fawning before the king and queen when Erik walked in.

"We want to bless the prince, Your Majesties," Angel, said enthusiastically, curtseying deeply. 

Alex nodded his agreement and Sean said "Yeah!"

The White queen smiled. "We welcome your blessings, fairies," she said. There was a quiet titter that went around the room at that and Erik got the distinct impression that that "fairy" was a word most commonly used as a derogative by the humans. He kept his rage in check, for the time being. 

Alex approached the bassinet first. "Young Prince Charles, I bless you with a life of joy," he said, somewhat awkwardly. "May you ever be happy." Erik wondered when and how his siblings had learned to use their fairy magic for such things. Did Hank teach them? Or were they bluffing? He saw the red spark as Alex leaned down to kiss the baby's forehead and realized that Alex was using real magic, and it would be unwise of Erik to use any magic that contradicted the blessings his siblings were casting. He would have to see what they came up with and improvise.

Angel was next. She fluttered over to the baby and said, "Young Prince Charles, I bless you with beauty--I mean handsomeness," she amended quickly as King Shaw frowned briefly. It was no dishonor to call a male beautiful among the fae folk, but as Erik had so painfully learned, humans had different and odd customs. There was a green spark as Angel kissed the baby's forehead.

Sean was next. He was not even into his teens yet, Erik reflected, feeling a stab of guilt as the young fairy walked nervously up to the bassinet. He whispered something to Alex and was pushed in response. "Young Prince Charles, I bless you with car--ker--well, everybody's gonna like you," he stammered, blushing. He ignored Angel's hissed "Charisma!" as he went to kiss Charles on the forehead, resulting in a orange spark. 

As the three fairies withdrew, King Shaw stood to speak. "We are very pleased with the gifts and bless--" he froze as Erik took three steps forward, into a clearing in the crowd. The king visibly flushed and swallowed. 

Erik, in contrast, was pleased to find that he did not have a physical reaction. He eyed the king with cool green eyes and glanced with raised eyebrows at the queen and assembled nobles. "Oh, are you waiting for me?" he said calmly to Shaw. "That's a little surprising, seeing as how I did not get an invitation."

"Erik!" Alex said. He and his younger siblings were staring at Erik in shock. He ignored them. 

"I, did, however, come prepared to bestow a blessing upon your young son," Erik continued, in a casual tone, and then adopted an expression of false regret. "Well--not so much a blessing, actually."

"No," whispered the queen. Shaw held out a hand to silence her and his mouth tightened as he faced Erik. 

"Do your worst, _fairy_ ," Shaw said contemptuously. 

Shaw obviously thought his magic had been taken with his wings. Erik's anger flared but he was careful not to let it show. He walked towards the bassinet and stood close to it, close enough that the queen leapt to her feet and had to be held back by Shaw.

"Young Prince Charles," Erik said in a syrupy-sweet voice, leaning over the crib so his breath wafted over the infant's face and his horns cast a shadow. "You will be happy, handsome, and well-loved, yes. But on your eighteenth birthday you will be struck by an arrow, and it will send you into a deep sleep. You will not awaken until you receive _True Love's Kiss._ " Erik spoke the last sentence standing straight up, making unwavering eye contact with Sebastian Shaw. Erik was sadistically pleased to see the king flinch on the last three words. 

"Guards!" yelled Shaw. Erik reached his hand and touched the child. Everyone froze. 

"This curse is unbreakable," Erik said loudly, looking around, daring anyone to come closer. He focused all his pain and anger on willing his curse to be so and purple lightning arched out of his hands towards the bassinet and wrapped around it. The baby's thin cry arose in the room as a strong wind ran through the castle ballroom and blew out all but a few of the torches. Erik felt the air crackling around him and he felt swollen and magnificent with power. Shaw's henchmen were afraid to touch him, and he grinned at them all as he bowed insultingly low and dramatically exited. 

He walked right out the front castle gates; nobody followed or stopped him. He was very pleased with how the confrontation had gone, and looked around for Raven. She was flying high above him, circling.

"Raven," he called. She flew lower. "Did you see that?" he asked, with a grin. "I think it went well. We're not even being followed."

She assumed human form next to him. "I think you scare me," she whispered with a shiver. 

He snorted. "I didn't hurt the child."

"No, I guess, but..." she trailed off. "I didn't really think you'd do it. Curse the prince, I mean."

"I told you I was going to," Erik said, annoyed for some reason he couldn't pinpoint. "Go see what they are planning to do about it," he said to Raven dismissively. She immediately assumed bird form and took flight. She didn't usually follow direct orders like that, but it seemed that she was just as happy not to be in his presence at that moment. 

It was well after dark and Erik was back to his usual stomping grounds in Genosha when Raven returned. "Lots of news," she said excitedly, switching to human form. Erik was relieved she seemed to have forgotten or forgiven being upset with him earlier. 

"The king has ordered all arrows in the land to be gathered and burned," she said breathlessly. Erik nodded. No less than he had been expecting, and he internally congratulated himself on thinking of such a thing; arrows were the most accurate projectile weapon the humans had. "Also, he is sending the prince away to be raised by--" Raven paused dramatically. "The three fairies who blessed him today."

" _What_?" Erik was confused and not a little angry. "Alex, Angel, and Sean? They are not even grown, and barely able to take care of themselves!"

Raven shrugged. "The king seems to think the baby will be safer with them. The queen does not agree, and she is in hysterics. But the infant has already left with your siblings. They are supposed to bring him back the day after he turns eighteen."

Erik was pacing. He did not like this, not at all, for reasons he couldn't exactly put his finger on. "Where are they going?" he snapped at Raven.

She rolled her eyes. "Calm down, would you? I knew you would ask that, so I followed them. They have gone to this dilapidated cabin, remote, still in Westchester but near the border with Genosha."

"Take me there," he said imperiously. Raven rolled her eyes again. 

"It's a long walk," she warned, but resignedly switched to her bird form and started showing him the way. 

**  
It was nearly dawn by the time they arrived, and Erik knew they were getting close when he heard a baby crying. He gestured to Raven to get a closer look while he hung back at the tree line. 

"They're all asleep, with pillows covering their heads," she reported back, clearly upset. "The baby stinks, he needs his diaper changed, and he is a mess - it looks like they tried to feed him chocolate? And leaves? What the fuck?"

Erik seethed at the incompetence of his siblings even as he asked himself why it mattered. He had nothing to gain by coddling the infant. He walked closer to the cabin and saw the bassinet through the window, and could not resist creeping closer to see the baby. The baby stopped crying abruptly as soon as it saw his face and its tear-covered face broke into a delighted grin. Erik scowled at it, which only made it giggle.

"You're ugly and I don't like you," Erik told the baby. The baby either didn't care or didn't believe him, because it continued smiling and gurgling until it became fascinated with its own foot waving in the air and an expression of utter astonishment crossed its face.

Erik swallowed back the immediate swell of adoration that he felt for the baby. _That's Sean's blessing working on me,_ he thought. He would have to keep away from the baby if he wanted to keep his perspective. Fine. He could do that.

Erik walked away and out of the line of sight of Prince Charles, and the baby immediately began wailing again. "Raven," Erik said in exasperation, "can you do something about that?"

Raven had already gathered the supplies to change his diaper. "Duh," she said, rolling her eyes. 

After the baby was changed, Raven mashed some banana and fed that to him as well. Erik observed through the window, from outside. No need to kill the little beast, after all. The baby was just falling asleep in her arms when Angel stirred. Raven gently put Charles back into his crib and turned into a raven again and flew up to the rafters just as Angel sleepily stumbled into the baby's room.

"See, I told you he'd shut up eventually," she yelled to Alex, who threw a book at her. The baby, fortunately, slept on.


	2. Charles

The fairy siblings did not get any better at taking care of the royal baby as time passed. Alex and Sean seemed to think that Angel was the best-suited for childcare, (which she wasn't) and she resented that assumption by her brothers and was deliberately bad at it in retaliation. Charles' primary caregiver was actually Raven, who would wait until the fairy siblings had hopelessly twisted themselves into an argument or fight or had fallen asleep and would then come change and feed the baby. None of the fairies ever seemed to notice or comment on it, as they each probably assumed one of them was doing it.

Erik kept his distance from the baby, but he couldn't go far; he found that a part of him needed to see young Charles frequently, even as he resented the child's very existence. He both hated and cared for the young prince and it frustrated him. He often wished he could leave, and sometimes he would for a day or two, but then a strange panic would grip him, a feeling that something had happened to the child, and for a moment he would feel exhilarated and then he would feel like he couldn't breathe and the only thing that would calm him was seeing the toddler alive and healthy again. 

Erik relocated himself to living in a small nearby cave. He kept up washing regularly out of necessity more than anything else - although his siblings seemed unaware of his proximity, surely they would notice the smell anytime he was upwind if he didn't clean himself regularly. He watched the young toddler put himself in dangerous situations, including almost running off a cliff once, but something shiny redirected the child's attention at the last second and he ran giggling in a completely different direction. 

Raven insisted it was Erik who consistently saved the child. Erik disagreed with her whenever she voiced that opinion, but he secretly wondered--feared--if it wasn't true, at least on a subconscious level. He still had trouble controlling his magic sometimes, and he suspected that he sometimes made things happen without realizing it. 

One time when Charles was about three years old, he ran straight for where Erik was hiding in the trees. Erik backed up a few steps in surprise but he couldn't bring himself to run away from what was really just a human toddler. The little boy looked up at him with outstretched arms, cherubically pink cheeks and cerulean blue hopeful eyes. 

"What?" Erik snapped irritably.

The little boy blinked as his arms faltered a little. His eyes got wider and started to well with tears. Erik tolerated this for about ten seconds before he said, "Oh, fine," and picked up the boy and held him at arms' length. He walked him over to Raven, who was regarding him with undisguised amusement. 

"Another skirmish between you and your mortal enemy, I see," she said drily. 

"Take him," Erik muttered. She did, and Charles twisted to keep his eyes and a huge gleeful grin on his face as he looked at Erik. 

Erik's chest hurt and he couldn't look at the child for another moment. He closed his eyes. "Take him away," he said quietly. He heard Raven's noisy and obvious sigh, but heard her walking away as well.

Erik stayed farther away after that, making sure the boy couldn't see him, but he insisted that Raven be closer to the child for reasons he didn't want to investigate too closely and which Raven fortunately did not question. Raven found it hard to do that without revealing her existence to the fairy siblings, though, so she adopted the form of young water sprite of about Charles's age with blue scaled skin and silky red hair. The fairy siblings were completely unconcerned about Charles' new fae friend and Raven could keep an eye on him as she pretended to be his playmate.

Erik stayed mostly in his cave, coming around to check on the young prince less frequently. Raven had become absolutely devoted to him and Erik's siblings were also completely charmed by Charles' apparently charming and joyful disposition. Erik's anger at Shaw had mellowed somewhat over the years; in fact, he hardly thought about the king anymore. He thought more about the young son and every now and then felt an uncomfortable pinch of conscience when he realized what would happen on the boy's eighteenth birthday, which he would immediately push down. Shaw deserved it, he told himself, even after the words lost some of their meaning. 

As Charles grew older, he started to explore farther and farther from the cabin he lived in. One day he was roaming quite far from home, in a dark and thickly wooded part of the forest. Since Erik couldn't locate Raven, he reluctantly followed the boy a little closer than he ordinarily would. 

The shadows were growing long when Charles abruptly stopped and Erik was forced to step back into the shade of a tree trunk. 

"I know you're there," Charles said clearly and calmly. "You don't have to be afraid."

A startled chuckle escaped Erik's mouth despite himself. "I, fear you?" he said in a low voice. "Perhaps it is you who should fear me." He spoke with some menace in his tone. Who was this child, to think Erik would fear _him_?

Charles laughed, a joyful, clear sound. "I know who you are, you know," he said with a smile, taking a step towards Erik's hiding spot and peering into the foliage curiously. 

Erik was suddenly struck by how much this boy had grown up. He was nearly a man, by the standards of the fae folk, although by human standards he was still more than two years away from achieving his majority. He had intelligent and perceptive blue eyes, and the only crack in his confident facade was revealed by the occasional biting of his lower lip. Charles bit his lip now, reddening it, even as he pressed forward towards Erik.

Erik made a snap decision and revealed himself by stepping in front of Charles. The boy paused, taken aback, but did not quite step back. They were standing about eight feet apart, facing each other. Charles looked up to meet Erik's eyes and smiled a crooked smile. 

"So who am I?" Erik asked in a level tone, keeping his eyes locked on the boy's, his face expressionless. 

Charles hesitated before responding, but it didn't seem to be out of fear as much as it was that he was searching for the right word. "You're--my friend," he said softly. "I've seen you, sometimes, watching over me. I'm glad you have finally shown yourself."

Erik stared at the prince, not sure how to respond to that. The boy was not wrong, and yet at the same time he was very wrong. Erik's chest constricted painfully for a moment before he remembered to breathe again. 

"It's getting late," he said after a moment. "You should go back. Your family will be worried about you."

Charles face fell a bit, and Erik hated himself, just a little, for being the cause of any disappointment for the lad. Charles nodded, a quick, swift nod, and started off resolutely in the direction of home. Erik watched but did not follow right away. He was glad of that when Charles abruptly stopped and turned on his heel. 

"Can I see you tomorrow?" The boy asked. His face was--determined.

It was dark enough at that point that Erik knew Charles couldn't see the look on his face; he could probably only see Erik in silhouette, all of him appearing as black as his horns. "Maybe," he said reluctantly. "But not if you don't go home now."

Charles smiled brilliantly and turned to go. 

"Wait," Erik heard himself saying, cursing himself even as he did. "Don't...tell your family about me."

Charles cocked his head to one side in puzzlement but nodded his agreement. Erik watched from far enough away as Charles walked back to his cabin. He felt he had made a mistake in talking to Charles but he didn't know when or if he could have done anything differently. 

**

Erik avoided Charles for a week.

The next time he saw the lad was well into Genosha, late at night. Erik stopped, stunned to see the boy out so late and so far from home.

"What are you doing here," he growled. It wasn't a question.

Charles jumped and whirled, eyes seeking out Erik and not seeing him. Erik was wearing all black as usual and he remained deliberately out of sight. 

"You've been avoiding me," Charles said lightly, stepping generally towards Erik into the brush, still looking around him for Erik's specific location.

Erik said nothing. He had, in fact, been avoiding the boy. He didn't feel like examining why and certainly didn't feel like talking about it.

"I asked my family about you," Charles continued.

" _What_?" Erik stepped towards Charles and grasped his arm. "I told you--"

"I didn't," Charles said quietly. "But I'm curious to know why I shouldn't." He looked up at Erik, his eyes impossibly big and blue--too good for this place, too good for Erik. 

Erik let go of Charles and sighed. "Why?" he found himself asking.

Charles rubbed his arm, and Erik felt a spike of guilt, knowing the boy would bruise. "Why what?"

"Why do I matter to you?" Erik asked. 

Charles gave him a look of absolute bafflement. "Why?...You are...the most interesting and intriguing part of my life," he said slowly. "You are a mystery. You follow me but you avoid me. You worry about me but you despise me. How could I not be curious, at the least?"

Charles' answers were so plainly stated, and so obvious, that Erik could only stare at him, speechless. He realized he had underestimated the prince--the beastie had grown up into a very intelligent and perceptive young man. Something in Erik changed at that moment; something tipped over, although he would not have been able to put a name to it even if he had been fully cognizant of it. 

And, he knew that Erik didn't want him to talk to his family about Erik, and had observed from Erik's reaction that it was important to him. And apparently the lad knew something about leverage.

"What do you want from me?" Erik gritted out. 

Charles smiled and started to respond when a fluttering behind Erik turned into the sound he recognized as Raven changing forms. Charles stared over Erik's shoulder, his eyes wide.

"Erik," said Raven. She was in her human form. There was a heaviness in her voice. He turned around to face her. "You have to come, please. Hank--" she broke off, her eyes wide and supplicating.

"Hank?" Erik asked in puzzlement. He hadn't seen or spoken to the old blue beast in over fifteen years. Why now--

Panic gripped him as he put the pieces of Raven's words and body language together. "Charles, go home," he said, not looking at the young man and instead walking in the direction he knew Hank's home was. It was in Genosha, but closer to the border of Westchester than Erik was usually comfortable. Closer to where Charles lived. 

"But--wait. Who's Hank?" Charles called after him. Erik broke into a run, trying to lose the young human, Raven easily keeping up with him in her bird form and flying slightly ahead of him.

Even as his body surged with a panicked energy, part of Erik's mind was bothered by Charles not knowing who Hank was. Had his brothers and sister not taken the boy to see the beast who had practically raised them? Had they abandoned Hank, as Erik did?

Did Erik abandon him?

Erik's thoughts were a vortex of guilt and pain as he ran through the forest, ducking his head frequently so his horns wouldn't catch on the foliage. He hadn't ever told Hank what had happened to him--did Hank even know he was alive?

He burst into the clearing in front of Hank's hobbit-hole home. He debated knocking on the door and decided not to and slowly pulled the door open. The great blue-furred beast was lying down on a sleeping pallet of hay and feathers, his eyes closed. 

Erik felt a lump in his throat as he slowly approached the beast's side. Hank's fur was patchy in places, revealing wrinkled dry blue skin in spots. Around his face there was more gray fur than Erik ever remembered seeing before. Erik was feeling anxiety rising in him until he saw the gentle rise and fall of Hank's ribcage and Erik let out a shaky breath of relief. 

"No, you're not too late." The reedy voice coming from Hank didn't sound at all like the soft rumble Erik remembered from his youth. The beast's eyes opened a slit and looked at Erik. He put out a large blue-furred paw and Erik took it with both hands. "Erik," the beast said, and fondness relaxed his forehead. 

"Hank, I--I'm sorry," Erik choked out. He was sorry he had never told Hank why he had withdrawn from his life so suddenly, sorry that he had left the burden of supervising Erik's three hellions of siblings on Hank's shoulders when Erik left. The old fairy waved away his apology. 

"Glad you are here," Hank murmured, before a coughing fit racked his body. He gazed at Erik with unfocused eyes. "I'm going to go soon. I'm glad I got to--" Hank stopped abruptly, and he seemed to see something impossibly distant. "Erik," he whispered. Erik squeezed his hand so hard it had to be hurting as Hank's eyes shut and his head lolled. 

"Hank," Erik croaked. It was too soon, and he had so much to say; he hadn't ever envisioned Hank not being around. He hadn't meant to let fifteen years go by. He hadn't meant to never say 'thank you' for being his stand-in guardian after his parents passed away. "I'm sorry I left you."

Hank shook his head, even as more coughs racked his body. "You grew up." 

It was wrong, it was all wrong in so many ways, but Erik didn't have the heart or inclination to correct Hank. He just wrapped both of his hands around Hank's great paw and closed his eyes and breathed and listened to Hank's labored breaths until the time came when Hank didn't inhale again. Erik opened his eyes and saw Hank blurry through tears until he simply wasn't there anymore; he had disapparated, as fae folk did when they passed on. Erik leaned over the pallet and sobbed. 

He didn't know how long he was like that until he heard a soft sound behind him. His head snapped to the side and he saw Charles standing awkwardly by the door. Erik quickly turned his head away so Charles wouldn't see his face. "I told you to go home," he said. His voice sounded rusty and clogged. 

He heard Charles stepping closer and then felt the pallet move slightly as Charles sat down next to him and embraced him from the back. Erik stiffened at the unexpected contact. Part of him wanted to throw Charles off but he trembled with hesitation because--because--

Reason, excuses, thought itself crumbled in Erik's mind as Charles clung to his back silently. Erik was physically incapable of rejecting this from Charles. Even though he was loathe to be vulnerable around the young prince, he was also wrapped up in grief and guilt over Hank's passing. Hank had quietly taken over parenting Erik and his siblings when his parents passed away, and Erik had abandoned him without ever even thanking him. In fact, Erik had never really grieved his own parents’ passing; he had felt too much responsibility to care of his younger siblings at the time and had pushed down the pain to deal with later. So as he mourned Hank, he was also mourning the loss of his parents. The thought brought fresh tears to Erik's eyes and they slipped silently down his cheeks as he curled into Charles' embrace. 

**

Erik woke suddenly, in the dark, not knowing where he was. There was a warm body next to him, breathing the even breath of sleep, and with a start Erik remembered. He gently disentangled himself from the younger man and Charles murmured with a slight frown and turned over, still soundly asleep. His long lashes rested on his cheek as he lay in profile and Erik resisted the urge to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes. 

Erik stared down at Charles and tried to put his finger on something that was nagging at his awareness. Charles had been blessed with beauty, charisma, and happiness. He had not been blessed with compassion, which meant that his action, comforting Erik when he was obviously hurting, was an act wholly his, nothing that came from the fairy magic of Erik's siblings. 

Erik chewed on the inside of his cheek as he pondered why that mattered. He had been rejecting any positive feelings he felt towards Charles because he thought they were manufactured by magic--but Charles' compassion was not manufactured. So Erik couldn't easily disregard that, and it made him see Charles differently. The prince was not a charlatan; he was not his father; and yet he would suffer for his father's crime, and that was because of Erik.

As Erik's thought process reached it's conclusion, he found his hands were clenched in tight fists. The reason he wanted to push Charles away was the same reason he'd pushed Hank and his siblings away--guilt. 

The realization was hard to take, especially after he'd had such an emotionally draining evening. Erik wanted to destroy something, wanted to hunt and kill, and yet he also felt an aching tenderness for the young man sleeping nearby. He kept his rage at bay, and balanced it with the calm serenity that Charles inspired in him. He took a few deep breaths and realized what he had to do. 

In this strange mental balance point he found his magic responding better than it had in years and he concentrated on lifting Charles into the air, wrapping him with the licking tongues of purple lightning that accompanied the manifestation of Erik's power. The boy levitated steadily, his sleep undisturbed. Erik floated the slumbering prince ahead of him as he walked back to the cabin where Charles lived with the three fairies that he thought were his family. 

The household was sound asleep, fortunately, and Erik was able to get Charles inside and into an empty bed without waking anyone. As the boy snuggled under a blanket, blissfully unaware that there had even been a journey, Erik wondered if he could stretch his magic a bit farther, since it was working so well for him in this moment. He thought back to the curse he had cast over Charles when he was a baby and tried to undo it. 

Erik used every trick he could think of to undo the curse, struggling for hours as the sky became gradually lighter in color, but his attempts were bouncing off the prince, deflected by the strength and passion that had colored his original curse. And as Erik despaired, as he lost his precarious emotional balance, his magic became more erratic and he realized he might hurt Charles if he kept trying. As the first ray of sunlight shot over the horizon, Erik left, and he found himself back at Hank's home. He curled up on the pallet and slept, blessedly too emotionally exhausted to feel anything at all.

**

Erik did not go to visit Charles for weeks after that. It hurt too much to see the boy, hurt to feel guilt squeeze his heart when he thought of what was going to happen to the human when he turned eighteen. So he ran, and swam, and hunted, pushing himself hard every day so that at the end of the day he would sleep heavily. He had effectively moved into Hank's home, as it made him feel better somehow, and more connected to the old beast, to sleep there.

He knew Raven was still seeing Charles frequently, and from her he knew that Charles asked about Erik constantly once he figured out that Erik and Raven knew each other. Erik had given Raven strict instructions not to tell Charles anything about him, but he wasn't completely surprised when one day there was a knock on the open door of what Erik still thought of as Hank's home while Erik was there scraping a rabbit hide. 

"Hello?" Charles said hesitantly. Even though Erik wanted to tell him to go away, the hopeful look in Charles' big blue eyes brought him up short. 

"Hello, Charles," he said, resignedly, going back to his work. 

"I..." Charles took a step inside, obviously feeling very unsure. "I wanted to make sure you were okay. I haven't seen you in a while."

"I'm fine," Erik said without looking at him. "Busy, actually."

Even though Erik knew Charles must have gotten the hint, he saw the young man take another step inside. Erik shot him an irritated glance and redoubled his efforts on the rabbit hide. Charles didn't say anything for a few minutes and Erik risked looking at him. Charles had picked up a piece from Hank's chessboard and was pursing his lips at it thoughtfully. 

Were his lips always that red?

“What is this tiny horse for?” Charles asked after a moment. 

Erik looked up from his work and at the item Charles was holding. “It’s a knight.”

Charles gave him such a baffled look that Erik felt his lip twitch in amusement. “For chess,” Erik continued. 

The puzzled crease in Charles’ forehead deepened. 

“You do know what chess is, don’t you?” Erik asked, setting aside the rabbit hide he had been working on and picking up another. 

“It’s...a game?” Charles said slowly, his eyes sliding over the checkered board nearby. Erik puffed air out his nostrils in amusement. Clearly the boy was guessing, but he was smart enough that his guesses were usually correct.

“Would you like to learn how to play?” The words were out of Erik’s mouth before he had thought of all the ramifications of his offer. Erik had learned how to play from Hank, and even though he and Hank had both tried to teach Alex and Angel how to play when Erik was a boy (Sean had been too young), neither of them had taken to it. Erik missed playing chess, and he had a feeling that Charles would both enjoy it and excel at it. 

It was like seeing the sun come out, the way Charles beamed at the question. “Oh, yes!” He plopped down in front of the chessboard with legs crossed, looking at Erik with happy anticipation. 

Erik opened his mouth to try and backpedal, or retract his words, or even just procrastinate, and realized he didn’t have the heart. Sighing inwardly, he put away the rabbit skins for future cleaning and started explaining to Charles how each chess piece moved. 

**

Charles came over every few days after that to play chess with Erik. He rapidly became very good at the game and Erik found that when he could focus on the clear-cut strategies of playing chess, his doubt and guilt about his life fell away and he actually enjoyed himself. It also helped that Charles was a worthy adversary, with a quick mind. They talked during the games as well and Erik came to appreciate and enjoy Charles' cleverness and the wordplay he liked to engage in. 

He noticed, too, that Charles was getting taller and his shoulders were broadening. The young man had a quick, mischievous smile and eyes that were so startlingly blue that it frequently crossed Erik's mind that he might have missed a blessing regarding those eyes when Charles was an infant. In fact, the more Erik knew of Charles, the more he felt fond of the young man. 

One evening Charles and Erik were playing chess and Charles had just checkmated Erik. "That's a nice birthday present," he said with a smile to Erik. 

Erik blinked. "It's your birthday?" 

Charles nodded, shyly. "I'm sixteen today. An adult!"

Erik grinned. "Well, that is something to celebrate!" He thought for a moment and then went to a small cabinet above the sleeping pallet and was pleased to find what he hoped to find there. 

"I think a celebratory drink is in order, don't you?" Erik smiled at Charles and passed him the bottle of mead. 

Charles took a curious sniff. "What is this?"

"It's mead," Erik said. "Fermented honey. Hank...he used to make it. It was a specialty of his. I would get sips on special occasions when I was a boy." Erik suddenly stopped because Charles was looking at him intently and Erik realized how little he talked about his past. He felt a little hotter for a moment and swiped the mead from Charles to quickly take a sip.

Laughter pealed out of Charles at Erik's behavior and Erik felt something melt a little inside him. He offered the bottle back to Charles and this time Charles tipped his head back and took a healthy slug--which he almost coughed up. 

"Wow," he said, eyes watering, when he had recovered a bit. "That was--strong." 

It was Erik's turn to laugh and he took an easy sip of the mead himself, gazing at Charles. He couldn't remember why he shouldn't enjoy looking at him for a moment and Charles was looking right back, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles as he leaned back on his hands. He looks--grown-up, Erik thought in surprise, because of course he was grown-up if he was sixteen. 

Except...Erik's gaze turned thoughtful, and his brow creased. "Sixteen is adult for fairies," Erik said, "but not for humans. For humans, eighteen is adult." 

Charles shrugged and took another sip of the mead. "Too bad for them."

"Charles, _you're_ human," Erik said. 

Charles laughed and then became abruptly serious at the expression of Erik's face. "No, I'm a fairy. Like you, and Raven, and the rest of my family."

Erik cursed his inept siblings yet again. "I'm sorry, Charles, but you are very human. I know."

"How?" Charles said, and he was suddenly angry, in a way Erik had never seen him before. "How do _you_ know?"

Erik hesitated. He couldn't tell Charles the whole truth, and yet here he was mentally castigating his siblings for not telling Charles the truth. He was a hypocrite, and Charles was sitting there, glaring at him. 

"I'm sorry," Erik mumbled. "I...may be mistaken."

Charles opened to mouth to say something angrily and then closed it, confused. He looked at Erik for several minutes with a furrowed brow without saying anything. Erik knew that Charles was not easily fooled and he realized belatedly that backing off so quickly might not have been the best strategy to keep Charles from prying. 

"Because surely you would be able to prove you're a fairy," Erik continued, calmer. "What's your magic?"

Charles eyes narrowed a bit. Erik wasn't sure what to make of that but his pulse sped up a bit. "I can read minds," Charles said loftily after a moment, and took another swig of the mead. 

Erik leaned over to Charles and grasped the mead in Charles' hand. "Really? Then what am I thinking?" Charles didn't let go of the mead and Erik toppled onto his side next to him. Charles grinned wide and ran a tongue across his lower lip. Erik stared at the sight, not letting go of the mead bottle but not pulling on it, either. Charles licking his lip seemed almost--deliberate.

"That's easy," said Charles, his voice dropping in pitch. When had he become a baritone? Erik wondered irrelevantly. "You're thinking about kissing me." His eyes were dark and luminous as Erik's widened in shock. 

_"What_? No, I wasn't!" Erik protested, feeling his cheeks getting hot. He realized he was still on his side, and Charles was leaning over him, slowly moving closer. 

"Really? Well, are you _now_?" Charles eyes were twinkling and he ran his tongue across his lips again. 

Erik closed his eyes and sat up, putting a little more distance between himself and Charles. He was feeling very confused and a little out-of-control, and Erik didn't like feeling out of control. "Very funny," he managed to say to after a moment. He didn't look at Charles; he felt like he couldn't trust himself to. 

After a minute he heard Charles exhale. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "My magic hasn't manifested, and I guess I'm a little sensitive about it. Sometimes Sean will tease me about being human, but I didn't think--" he broke off and Erik looked at him. "Sometimes I'm afraid he's not teasing," Charles admitted in a quiet voice, and then, in a petulant and rising tone: "But I don't want to be human!" 

It was like a switch had been flipped; Charles had gone from a confident, flirtatious man to an upset child. Erik didn't know what to say to comfort him, but he needed to do something, so he wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders and drew his head to Erik's shoulder. Charles rested with his head there for a while and then said, "Erik?" 

"Mmm?"

"Is it the mead that's making me feel--funny?"

Erik chuckled. "Yes. That's the appeal."

Charles rolled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. He looked at Erik and suddenly seemed nervous. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," said Erik, even though his gut clenched at the thought of what Charles might ask him. 

"I wasn't going to, but I feel...braver than usual." Charles smiled for a moment, before the nervous expression reappeared. "Uh, sometimes, there's a thing that happens to my..." He swallowed and gestured vaguely to his groin area. "Sometimes, it gets, well..."

"Hard," Erik said, his mouth dry. 

Charles bit his lip, without artifice this time, and nodded, blushing furiously. "So that--it's normal?"

"Yes," said Erik, after a moment of not being able to find his voice. "It's normal. It's fine." He stood up to put away the mead, needing to put some distance between himself and Charles. "You haven't talked to Sean or Alex about this?"

"Well, I tried, but--they both acted like it was a big joke," Charles said with a frown, kicking at something imaginary with his foot. "It was hard to tell what what real and what they were making up."

Erik felt familiar anger swelling in him at his brothers' incompetence. 

"I'm not even sure what it's supposed to be called," Charles said with a self-deprecatory laugh. "Alex calls it a cock, Angel calls it a willy--"

"Penis," Erik gritted out. "And when it's hard it's called an erection. It happens because..." Erik trailed off because he really didn't want to continue. 

"Because?" Charles prompted, blue eyes big and curious. 

Erik made an exasperated sound. "How about Raven? Have you talked to her?"

"Raven's a girl," Charles pointed out, reasonably. "Even I know she doesn't have a--penis."

Erik pressed his lips together. He did have a point. 

Charles laid back and let his head loll from side to side, his eyes half-closed. "Sometimes it gets hard when I think about you," he whispered. 

"Okay, well, I think it's time to call it a night," Erik said loudly. 

Charles rolled his head towards Erik and looked at him with a slight pout on his lips. "Do you really not want to kiss me?" he said. 

Erik rubbed his hands over his face as he considered how to respond. "I don't know how to answer that, Charles." Well, it was honest. Maybe too honest. "I'd certainly rather talk about it when we're not drunk."

Charles considered that, and a huge yawn took over his face as he did. 

"See how tired you are?" Erik said, reaching for Charles' hands to pull him up. Charles grasped his wrists in return but Erik only had the warning of a twinkle in his eye before he found himself falling towards the young man. 

"Charles," Erik said in exasperation, rolling off the young man and onto his back, preparing to sit up.

Charles lifted Erik's arm and snuggled up to his side. "Can I sleep here? Because I don't think I’ll make it back like this."

Charles felt warm against his side and Erik lay back down reluctantly as he felt drowsiness sweep over him. Some part of his mind acknowledged that Charles had a point, as he usually did. Stupid intelligent beastie, Erik thought as he drifted off to sleep, not noticing the oxymoron, as Charles curled up on his side next to him. 

**

The sunlight felt like it was stabbing him in the eyes, and Erik winced as he tried to move his head out of the direct sunlight streaming in the window of Hank's home. He tipped his head back and hit something that made a low noise. Belatedly, Erik remembered that he had fallen asleep next to Charles. Somehow during the night they had ended up spooning, with Charles behind Erik, actually exactly how they slept together the first time, when Erik had been mourning Hank. 

Erik quietly withdrew from Charles' embrace, feeling angry at himself for a reason he couldn't quite pinpoint. He didn't want sleeping over to become a habit for Charles; there was something about it that seemed--not right. 

Erik went out for a run, and followed it with a swim. Only once did it cross his mind that he used to fly where he now ran. Charles had left by the time Erik got back to Hank's home in the late afternoon. Erik was glad of this, and yet he also felt a little deflated.

**

"Do you want to hear some gossip?"

Erik turned suddenly, to see Raven in her water-sprite form, grinning at him. He was bathing in the pond and didn't know she was near before she spoke. 

"Gossip. Sure," he said, scrubbing his hair, working around his horns.

"Everyone says Queen Emma is a witch," she whispered theatrically. "They say they can feel her in their heads."

Erik snorted. "Who is 'everyone'?" 

Raven shrugged. "People in the village say they've heard it from servants in the castle," she said, trailing blue fingers through the water from where she sat on the bank. 

"And?" Erik prompted when she didn't continue. 

She laughed at that. "That's all I've got, sorry! If I knew you liked gossip so much I would have brought you some sooner." Her yellow eyes twinkled at him. 

"You mean to tell me you didn't immediately go spy on the queen to see if it was true?" Erik asked, then dunked his head under the water to rinse it, so he missed part of her response.

"...would have been inside my head and known who I was," she was saying as he emerged. He considered that as he strode to the side of the pond. 

"But 'witch' isn't really accurate anyway - they probably mean she has fairy blood," Raven continued, unashamedly watching Erik as he walked out of the water naked. 

"Huh." Erik towelled his head off with an absorbent cloth he had found at Hank's and which he suspected existed for this every purpose. "If that's true, it would mean Charles is part fairy."

"He thinks he's all fairy," Raven commented. 

"Yes, I've recently been made aware." Erik started putting his pants on. "Why haven't you told him the truth about his parentage?"

"Why haven't _you_?" She countered, belligerently, then sighed. "I don't know...I've never wanted to hurt his feelings, and he's kind of sensitive about not having fairy magic. He would probably only believe it if it came from Alex or Angel, anyway. He hates humans as much as most fairies."

"Charles, hate?" Erik scoffed in disbelief as he put his shirt on. "No, he's not capable of hate." 

Raven gave him an odd look at that statement, but reconsidered her words. "Well, he rejects the idea of being human, that's for sure."

"I've noticed." Erik actually hate most humans, but the idea of Charles rejecting what he was bothered him. "Raven, you go to the human village frequently. Would you take Charles with you?"

Raven's eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she was obviously thinking out loud as she spoke. "Well, I could, I suppose...I'd have to reveal the truth about myself, because I'd have to go to the village as a human...although I honestly think he has worked out that I'm a shape-shifter already. But--why?"

Erik felt his chest clench. "If there's even a chance of him living his life, he needs to find a human who will love him," he said tightly. He felt like the words were being ripped out of him.

Raven's eyes widened as she processed Erik's words. "Erik, yes! That's a great--wait. So...you want him to live? Why don't you just undo your curse?"

"Because I can't!" The words came out more violently than he intended as he whirled towards Raven with a snarl on his lips. "I fucking tried, for hours. It's unbreakable--exactly as I intended it to be when I made it."

Raven shrank back a bit from his wrath and grasped at the good news. "But this--this is a good plan, Erik. Charles is completely lovable. It should be easy to find someone to fall in love with him."

Erik snorted. "Right. It's a thin hope, Raven. I knew when I made the curse that True Love--and by extension True Love's Kiss--doesn't exist."

Raven gazed at him with an expression uncomfortably close to pity. "Oh, Erik."

"But he might enjoy the company of humans anyway," Erik said, determinedly ignoring Raven's reaction. "And maybe..." he shrugged. "Maybe he won't be so upset when he finds out he is one if he knows a few." And it would definitely be good for his social horizons to be broadened, Erik thought but didn't say, remembering uncomfortably how the drunk young man had practically begged him for a kiss. 

**

Raven told Charles about her true nature (although not how it came about) and found out that he had indeed had his suspicions, and he was glad she told him. When she asked if he wanted to go to the human village, he was at first shocked, and then terribly excited. Raven realized that the only people he had known in his life were Alex, Angel, Sean, Erik, and herself and she understood a little more about why Erik asked her to do this. Charles loved people too much to be sequestered away from the world, and with his blessings, he probably wasn't in any real danger. 

They set out walking but before they had gone very far they encountered a human woman swearing like a sailor at a cart that a very bored-looking horse was tied to. Raven camouflaged herself by reverting to her natural raven form as Charles hesitantly said, "Hello?" 

The woman whirled around and Charles saw that she was actually fairly young, about his age. She had brown eyes, like Angel, and her hair was about the color of his hair. He stared, fascinated. He had only known five other faces in the world and this one was new. 

"Can I help you?" she asked testily after Charles had stared at her for a little too long. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed in surprise. "I was just--you are--I like looking at you," Charles had no idea what the right things to say was and he defaulted to honesty. Then he realized she had asked him a question. "Oh, um, no?"

_Very smooth,_ thought Raven sarcastically.

"No what?" the woman said, her forehead wrinkling in confusion. 

"No, you can't help me, I mean, not with anything that I'm aware of," Charles explained. "Although it is very kind of you to offer."

"Offer? I--what?" Now her forehead was more wrinkled than ever. 

Raven would have laughed if she'd been in a form that was capable of it.

"What's your name?" Charles blurted out. 

"I'm...Moira," she said cautiously, extending her hand. Charles looked at it, appearing somewhat confused, before he decided to just clasp it between his two hands. She looked startled but did not immediately yank her hand away. 

"I'm Charles," he said with a huge smile that made the corners of Moira's mouth turn up. 

_Clearly she is not immune to fairy blessings_ , Raven thought.

"Ah, well, it's nice to meet you, Charles," Moira said finally, and looked pointedly at her hand, still clasped tightly within his. "Can I have my hand back now?"

Charles inhaled in surprise and released her hand. He was still grinning at her. Raven could tell he was delighted to have a new friend, unsurprisingly. 

The horse nickered, saying in her language, "Hey, there's still a problem with the cart."

Moira turned to survey the cart and sighed heavily. "Right. Back to the problem at hand."

"What, ah, seems to be the problem?" Charles asked, putting his hands behind his back and rocking up on the balls of his feet. "Maybe I can help."

"Well, I think something is jamming the wheel, because it won't move when Betsy pulls on it," Moira explained. The cart wasn't that big and had only two large wooden wheels. 

"Betsy, have you tried backing up?" Charles asked the horse seriously. The horse regarded him with no interest at all and Moira burst out laughing. 

"You're funny," she said, shaking her head. "Although, if I could get her to back up, that would probably help."

"Well, I can try using my fairy magic," Charles said airily and Raven almost cawed in shock. 

Moira stiffened. "Fairy magic?"

"Yes, although, sometimes it's not very reliable, so I can't make any promises," Charles babbled, turning a little red. Raven knew that Charles didn't have any magic, so he was--trying to impress her? He was more likely to scare her.

Moira in fact was far from impressed. She was slowly backing away from Charles, looking scared but conflicted. "You're a fairy?" she hissed in a whisper, her eyes darting around as if someone might hear. 

Charles looked terribly hurt for a moment, then his lips pressed in a tight line. "Yes. Is that a problem?"

"You don't look--any different," Moira said cautiously, seeming to relax a bit, although she wasn't coming any closer to Charles. "Aren't fairies supposed to have wings?"

"Well, clearly, not all of them do," Charles replied, although he seemed a little shaken himself. "I might be able to help with your cart, though." He theatrically put two fingers on his temple and frowned at the cart. 

Nothing happened for over a minute, until Raven sighed and flew to the front of the horse, where she cawed loudly. Betsy was startled and backed up a few steps, and a small twig dropped out of the cart wheel. 

Moira frowned and picked up the twig. She grasped Betsy's lead and led her forward and the wheel moved easily. 

Charles had actually been as startled as Betsy when Raven cawed, but he quickly recognized it as the assist it was and winked at her when Moira wasn't looking at him. 

"So that..." Moira was looking at him with with a mixed expression of confusion and amusement, shaking her head. "That was your fairy magic?"

"Magic works in mysterious ways," Charles said sagely. Raven rolled her beady little eyes. 

Moira snorted with mirth at that, and she relaxed considerably. "You know, you really had me going." She grinned at Charles. "I have to get back to the village, but I hope I see you again, Charles The Fairy." She stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. 

Charles inhaled in surprise as she, still grinning, stepped away and waved goodbye to him as she led Betsy through the forest to the village. 

"She didn't believe you, you know," Raven said, assuming her water nymph form at his elbow. "She thought it was a coincidence."

"Maybe not," Charles agreed. He couldn't stop smiling. "But, Raven, she kissed me! I can't wait to tell Erik!"

**

"Erik," said Charles breathlessly. "I have a girlfriend!"

Erik had been repairing a tear in one of his pairs of trousers and he almost ripped the fabric at Charles' words. "What?" 

"Her name is Moira, and she is human, but you know, I don't think humans are that bad after all," he said dreamily. 

_Yes they are,_ every fiber of Erik's body wanted to scream, suddenly flashing back to when he was young with Sebastian and how Charles seemed to be feeling exactly as Erik had felt all those years ago, before--

Erik forced himself not to react. "That's wonderful, Charles," he said neutrally. "Don't let her steal the thing that means the most to you." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

"She has brown hair, and big brown eyes, and--" Charles stopped as Erik's words permeated his awareness. "Steal? What do you mean?"

"Sorry." Erik rubbed his face on his hands. "I just--I'm sorry I said that."

"Erik." Charles knelt down next to him. "I didn't think this would upset you; you haven't--I mean, I didn't think you...should I not see her again?"

"No, no, you should...really. I--" Erik exhaled hard. "I--had a bad experience, when I was younger, with a human, and I felt much as you do now about your..." Erik looked to Charles to supply the name.

"Moira," Charles said, softly. "Your friend, they stole something from you?" 

"Yes." Erik really didn't feel like going into details, but did he ever? "But that doesn't mean your Moira is the same." Although Erik thought she probably was, if she was human. But if there was even a chance that she was Charles' True Love--

Familiar guilt squeezed Erik's chest. "You should keep your girlfriend."

Charles blushed. "Well, I might have exaggerated the girlfriend part."

Erik laughed despite himself.

**

Charles and Erik continued playing chess together at least once a week, and to Erik's relief, Charles never brought up the things he had said to Erik the night of his sixteenth birthday, and he never stayed the night. Even though they frequently disagreed when they discussed human-fairy relations (Charles was in favor of the humans and fairies learning to live together peacefully, whereas Erik didn't think that was an option), Erik gradually relaxed to the point where he rarely felt guilt or anger when Charles was around. He taught Charles how to hunt (although the young prince hardly had the stomach for it), and how to spearfish. Erik knew that Charles saw Moira a few more times, but he stopped talking about Moira to Erik after a few months. 

On the night of Charles' seventeenth birthday, he came over in the evening to play chess with Erik at what was now essentially Erik's home, Hank's old residence. 

"Aren't we going to celebrate with mead?" he asked Erik with a twinkle in his eye. 

"Mmm, I don't think that's a very good idea," Erik murmured, remembering the events of a year before. 

"Oh, right, because you got me drunk and tried to take advantage of me," Charles said, nodding. Erik opened his mouth to protest when he saw from the look on Charles' face that he was being teased. He snapped his jaw shut and glared at Charles, but he couldn't help relaxing into a rueful smirk. 

"Well, surprise, I brought something else for us to celebrate with," Charles said, and produced a bottle. Erik gave him a confused smile and accepted the bottle to take a sip--

Wine. The taste of red wine of his tongue for the first time in about eighteen years brought all the events of that night flooding back to him. Erik choked and spit out the liquid, staining both his clothes and Charles'. 

"Wine," he spat. "I can't drink wine."

"Well, tell me how you really feel," Charles said easily, but there was tension in his voice. He continued in a lower tone. "Erik, I'm sorry; I didn't know."

"I know," Erik contradicted himself by forcing himself to take another slug of the bottle. He wasn't even sure why, except that the idea of this one flavor having so much power over him rankled, and he wanted to beat that weakness in himself down. 

"Oh," said Charles, clearly surprised by Erik's erratic behavior. "Well, don't forget to share with the birthday boy!"

Erik handed the bottle to Charles wordlessly and Charles took a sip and then made a face. "I have to agree that the mead is better," he said, with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. 

Erik snorted with mirth and swiped the bottle back from Charles. This was starting to feel eerily similar to the night a year before, except now Charles was much more...grown-up. Erik noticed the wine had stained his companion's lips a little redder than usual. 

"Seventeen is not a very exciting birthday," Charles commented. "Not like sixteen--being an adult--or eighteen."

"Exciting isn't what I would call your eighteenth birthday," Erik muttered. Familiar guilt curled up in him, albeit muted by the alcohol.

Charles heard him but fortunately misinterpreted him. "Well, I meant it would be exciting if I were a human."

"Oh, right." Apparently alcohol brought out Erik's inner bastard. "Have you had any magic manifest yet?"

"Not as such." Charles didn't react in the emotional way Erik had expected, he just calmly took another small sip of wine. "I get headaches when other people have strong emotions, but I'm not sure that qualifies."

Erik sensed an opening but wanted to proceed cautiously. "So does Sean still tease you about being human?" 

Charles made a noncommittal facial expression. "Yes, but I'm not as worried about it as I used to be. Meeting Moira--I realized being human might not be all bad."

Moira. Oh yes, the girl. "Are you still seeing Moira? You haven't mentioned her in a while," Erik said nonchalantly, taking a sip of wine.

Charles shook his head. "No, it's been months. I like her, and I think she liked me, but..." Charles shrugged. "I just stopped feeling motivated to seek her out, and I think she felt the same."

Erik felt that he should be concerned, or try to encourage Charles to seek out more humans, but he felt a warm and dark satisfaction with Charles' response. 

"More wine?" Charles held out the bottle to Erik, and Erik took it. He looked at it and closed his eyes and let the terrible events of the night he lost his wings run through his mind. 

"Why do you hate humans, Erik?"

Erik snapped his eyes open and looked at Charles steadily for over a minute before he responded. He had been getting closer to telling Charles if not the whole truth, at least some truths about himself. He had let slip a few things and he knew Charles was curious, and in fact the alcohol made him feel uninhibited enough to--

"You are doing this on purpose," Erik said, slowly moving his gaze to Charles. "You wanted to get me drunk so I would tell you what you want to know." There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance. 

The look on Charles' face answered his question. 

"Just like a _fucking human_ ," Erik snarled, standing. He had never been angry at Charles before, but he felt all the anger inside him coalescing. "I guess even a fairy upbringing won't compensate for bad breeding, huh, Charles?" Lightning lit up the outside sky for a moment, turning the sky visible through the windows white for a split second.

Charles frowned, and stood, backing away from Erik, looking slightly alarmed. "I don't--what?"

"You want to know why I hate humans? Because they do shit like this," Erik snapped. "They act like they care about you, and then they manipulate you, and fucking take the thing that means the most to you--" Erik stopped talking abruptly. Lightning crashed again outside, this time accompanied by the patter of fat raindrops outside.

Charles had stopped backing up but he stood stiffly, looking at Erik, his face red and his expression inscrutable. 

"I know," he said quietly. "I'm not stupid, Erik; I figured out that I'm human. And I guess that means you hate me a little. And yes, I was being manipulative--I thought you would be more willing to talk if you were drunk. But, Erik--" Charles moved closer, so that he was within arms' reach of the taller man. "I would never steal from you. I just want to know _why_ you are the way you are. Where your anger came from. What happened?"

Erik looked at Charles' earnest, upturned face in shock. Charles knew he was human? "What happened..." Erik repeated, his voice hoarse. "I was hurt, a long time ago. By a human."

Charles nodded and sat down, reaching for Erik's hand. He tugged Erik down until he was crouching. "Sit," said Charles gently.

Erik sat, cross-legged, not relinquishing Charles' hand. "His name was Sebastian, and I thought he loved me."

Charles nodded to show that he was following, his blue eyes big. He didn't recognize the name, of course, Erik thought. He didn't know who his real parents were. 

"He..." Erik exhaled. This was harder than he thought. He took a large swig out of the nearby wine bottle. "He wanted to fly with me, and I couldn't carry him, and he didn't believe me." Erik closed his eyes as memories long-buried came back to him. "He gave me wine, and told me he loved me, and kissed me, and.." Erik really couldn't continue. 

"I'm not sure I understand," Charles said softly. "He wanted to--fly with you? And when you wouldn't, he--did he force himself on...?"

"He cut off my wings," Erik finally said, and it was literally the hardest thing he'd ever said. Charles gasped as he suddenly understood. 

"What the fuck," the younger man breathed, and Erik chanced to look up at him, and saw his face filled with compassion and his eyes filled with tears. "Erik, I'm so sorry, I knew it had to be something bad but I had no idea..."

Erik laid back on his sleeping pallet. He felt empty, drained, and yet also curiously light. His head was spinning a little. Erik really didn't like wine. 

Charles lay down next to him, on his side, gazing at Erik. "Thank you for telling me everything," he whispered, and then pressed a gentle kiss to Erik's cheek. It felt nice.

"Not everything," he mumbled, but Charles apparently didn't hear and was kissing him again, slightly closer to Erik's mouth, and it felt good again, and Erik couldn't remember if there was a reason that Charles shouldn't be kissing him. Charles was young but he was an adult, wasn't he?

Wasn't he?

Charles positioned his lips very close to Erik's and stayed there, trembling slightly. Erik felt Charles' warm breath on his lips and he understood that Charles was nervous, wanted this but was giving Erik an opportunity to turn away. 

Erik hovered in indecision, or rather, Charles hovered, his breath warming Erik's face and smelling of red wine which was for some reason not unpleasant at all. Charles had changed his association with the flavor of red wine from the evil abuse of Sebastian to the tentative affection of Charles. 

Erik closed the distance to Charles' mouth with his and enjoyed a very soft, sweet kiss from the delicious lips of the young prince. Erik sighed into the kiss and pulled Charles closer to him, wrapping his arms around him and holding him close. He broke the kiss but did not let Charles go. 

"It's raining," Charles murmured, snuggling next to Erik. "I think I'd better stay here tonight."

Erik didn't say anything, just hugged Charles tighter and ignored the clamoring at the back of his mind as he felt himself drifting off to sleep to the sound of the rain.

Erik awoke early the next morning, but Charles was gone.


	3. Madness

The next time Erik saw Charles, a few days later, Charles came by to see if Erik wanted to run with him, as they often did mornings. He seemed in a good mood (well, Charles was always in a good mood) and didn't say anything about the kiss or anything Erik had revealed to him. 

As Charles continued to act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, it began to make Erik feel a little crazy, although he would have felt extremely uncomfortable if Charles had brought any of that up. But since Charles didn’t mention it, Erik didn’t either, and eventually he just relaxed into their normal patterns. 

As the weeks went by, Erik realized that he had begun to view Charles as an equal, despite their age difference. Charles was interested in anything that challenged him, intellectually or physically, and Erik soon found that Charles was almost a match for himself in speed and dexterity. 

It changed him physically, Erik couldn't help but notice, one day in late spring. Charles' arms were more defined, and his thighs were thick with new muscle. His buttocks were round and plump--

Erik realized he was staring and he felt his cheeks flush even though Charles had no idea. With a jolt, Erik realized that for the second time ever in his life, he was sexually attracted to another person.

The son of the first person he'd been attracted to.

A human, who was cursed to fall asleep probably forever.

Because of a curse Erik placed.

"Erik?" Charles called behind him, turning. They had been racing when Erik had this emotional crisis and suddenly fell behind. 

Erik could not respond. He stared at Charles with an intense frown. Charles saw the look on his face and turned around immediately.

"Erik, gods, are you alright? What happened?" Charles walked towards him, concern etched all over his face. 

"I..." Erik was staring at Charles so hard that he didn’t notice the small hole in the ground in front of him. He would have fallen, except Charles quickly reached out a hand to steady him. Charles' hand felt warm and smooth. Had he never noticed that before? He stared at Charles’ hands, man's hands, not the hands of a boy. He wondered how those hands would feel touching him--

"I'm fine," Erik gasped, pulling away from Charles. He could not think of a single excuse to give Charles for his freak out, so he didn't offer one. Charles was obviously concerned, chewing on his lower lip, which was redder than ever and Erik just wanted to suck that lip into his mouth and--

"I'm not feeling well," Erik said, finally thinking of something he could say that would explain--this. Tearing his eyes away from Charles' lips, he added, "I think I'd better go back."

"I'll walk you home," Charles said, putting an arm around Erik's shoulder. Erik could smell him and the scent was maddeningly desirable, the smell of clean sweat and pine and spring rain. It was all Erik could do not to put his mouth on the young man on the walk back to his home.

"Do you need anything?" Charles asked solicitously once they were back and he had led Erik to sit on his sleeping pallet. "Water? A blanket? Do you feel hot?" Charles put his hand on Erik's cheek, frowning. 

_Your mouth. Your thighs._ "Nothing. Thank you."

"You do feel a little warm," Charles murmured. "Should I stay?"

"No," Erik choked. _Gods, please, no_. "I...don't want you to get sick. I'll feel better soon, I'm sure."

Charles frowned, but nodded. "All right. I'll go. But I'm going to come by tonight and make sure you are feeling better, okay?"

Erik nodded. He would get himself under control by then, surely.

Charles squeezed his shoulder and finally left.

Erik fell back on his pallet and tried to breathe. He closed his eyes but all he could see was Charles laughing, Charles running, Charles swimming...

Erik hadn't masturbated since he'd been a boy, but his turgid cock was begging for it now. With the awkwardness of long absence, Erik grasped his cock and re-familiarized himself with how to bring himself pleasure as visions of Charles flashed across his eyes. 

He didn't know if this was a good idea, but his body would not be denied. Just as he wondered if Charles masturbated, Erik grunted his climax. Sticky fluid spilled all over his hand and belly and he sighed with the pleasure and relief of it. He tried to remember the last time he had done that and he couldn't--before the incident, surely. 

Erik scrubbed his clean hand down his face. Maybe now he wouldn't be thinking about Charles in that way anymore, he thought--hoped--as he drifted off to sleep.

**

Erik awoke feeling itchy. He scratched his stomach uncomfortably, finding the stiff residue of his earlier pleasure dry and crackly. In addition to the sweat clinging to his skin from his run earlier--he very much needed to bathe.

Erik lifted his head. It was late afternoon, but there was enough sun in the sky and enough warmth in the air for him to get to the pond and clean himself up, if he went now. He grabbed the absorbent cloth he used to dry himself off and hurried to his bathing pond. 

Erik was almost done bathing when he heard a familiar baritone voice call, "Erik?"

Oh no. Erik felt a tremor--or was it a thrill?--run through him as Charles' face appeared through the foliage. He realized instantly that masturbation had not cured his attraction. His eyes followed Charles as he came closer to the water, lit in the reds and golds of the imminent sunset. 

"Erik? Are you feeling better?"

Charles had his hand held up to shade his eyes so he could see Erik, as the sun was directly in his eyes. Even with his eyes squinting and face scrunched, he was beautiful.

_As he was blessed to be,_ a voice inside Erik whispered.

Erik didn't how to answer him honestly. "I needed a bath," he said stupidly. Obviously.

Charles frowned and to Erik's surprise, he jumped into the water fully clothed and made his way to Erik in the waist-deep water. "Did you do this because you feel hot? It's a fever, isn't it? Dammit, Erik, why didn't you let me stay?"

Erik shook his head, and almost laughed at how ridiculously seriously Charles was taking a problem that was not a sickness at all. He almost laughed, that is, until Charles reached him and put the back of his hand of Erik's cheek.

Erik closed his eyes and sighed into Charles' touch. He felt Charles stiffen and his eyes snapped open to seek out Charles'. Charles looked surprised. The younger man swallowed, and started to remove his hand. Their eyes locked together, both of them now in the shadow of the trees, Erik lifted his hand to keep Charles' hand where it was. 

They stood there like that for several minutes, neither man relinquishing eye contact, Erik holding Charles' hand against his cheek. It wasn't until a breeze came through and pebbled Erik's skin that they moved. 

"Well, if you are not sick now, you will be soon, if you don't get out of this pond," Charles said with forced joviality. They waded their way to the shore and Erik towelled off as quickly as he could. He shot a glance at Charles to see if he was being watched, and saw Charles studiously looking away from Erik. 

Erik wasn't sure what that signified--perhaps, despite all Charles' flirting, he really wasn't interested in Erik that way? Erik felt his stomach drop but he didn't react outwardly. It was for the best, anyway, because--

"You are beautiful," Charles said quietly.

Erik was just putting on the last of his clothes when Charles spoke, and he stopped, stunned. 

Charles chuckled, self-deprecatingly. "It's almost hard to look at you, you are so beautiful."

"I'm scarred," Erik said, rejecting Charles words. How could _he_ think _Erik_ beautiful? "Disfigured."

"You mean these?" Charles strode over to his side and gently ghosted his fingers over the two small protuberances that came out of Erik's back, near his shoulder blades, over Erik's shirt. Erik gasped and shivered.

Charles snatched his hand away. "Did I hurt you? I'm so sorry; I didn't think--"

"No," Erik gasped. "I'm very sensitive there, that's all." In fact, Charles' touch had felt like electricity, in the best way. 

"Oh." Charles brought his hand back and touched lightly again. It went straight to Erik's cock and his right hand came up, grasping Charles on his bicep of the hand not then touching Erik's back. Charles slowed his hand but didn't pull away. 

"Do you want me to stop?" Charles said in a low voice. 

"Not particularly," Erik admitted. "But I am getting cold." The sun was completely down now, and the breeze had picked up. 

Charles gave him a slow, happy smile.

They walked back to Erik's home, side by side, not speaking. Erik was nervous. The moment felt very charged. He knew how perceptive Charles was, and he no longer doubted that Charles wanted him. But did Charles think that because he was older, that he knew what he was doing? Because...Erik didn't. He barely knew how to please himself, let alone another person. Would Charles be--disappointed? Would he lose interest if Erik couldn't please him sexually?

It was fully dark by the time they arrived at Erik's home. 

"I wish I had some mead," Erik said with a nervous laugh, shooting a glance at Charles to see how he would respond. 

Charles smiled his warmest smile. "I don't. You don't want me when you've been drinking," Charles said, his voice fading to a whisper at the end of the statement as he looked at Erik and his pupils dilated. 

"You _only_ want me when you've been drinking," Erik said, a smirk on his lips.

Charles shook his head and stood looking at Erik. His lips parted slightly and he looked at Erik's lips. Erik stood staring for a moment before he realized what that meant. Belatedly, he bent down and pressed his lips to Charles'.

Erik was consumed with anxiety. Was he doing it right? Was this what Charles wanted? It didn't feel magical, it felt awkward. 

Charles broke the kiss. "You’re quite a bit taller than me," he said breathlessly. "Can we try this lying down?"

Erik nodded, not trusting his voice. They lay down together on their sides facing each other and and Erik looked at Charles, wanting to touch him everywhere, but not knowing what was allowed, what Charles wanted.

"You can ask," Charles said, as if answering his unspoken question.

Erik was startled. "Did I say something?"

Charles shook his head, smiling softly. "You didn't have to. I know you, Erik. Studying you has been my life's work."

Erik couldn't help but crack a smile at Charles saying something so grandiose. It was just so adorably _Charles._ Without thinking, he nuzzled Charles' neck and inhaled the scent of him there. 

Charles gasped and arched into him, carding his fingers through Erik's hair. He tightened those fingers, breathing raggedly, when Erik started nipping that delicious juncture of neck and shoulder with his teeth. 

"Erik," Charles said, tugging on the lower hem of Erik's shirt. "Are you still cold?"

"Not at all," Erik murmured into Charles' neck. "Why, are you?"

"No," Charles said, "I just want you to take your shirt off." He grinned cheekily at Erik. 

Erik smiled back a little nervously and sat up, stripping off his shirt efficiently. Charles' hands greedily reached for his torso but Erik moved away, pushing himself down Charles' body, as he gently pushed the younger man onto his back. Doubt suddenly overcame him and he looked up at Charles, who was smiling at him through half-open eyes. "You said I could ask..." he started hesitantly. 

Charles nodded, running his fingers through Erik's hair, behind his horns. 

"Can I take your shirt off?"

Charles' smile faded and his eyes darkened as he nodded. Erik lowered himself until he was at the hem of Charles' shirt. He lifted it, nudging with his nose until a strip of flat belly appeared, with a few sparse dark hairs in the middle, all pointing downward into Charles trousers. Erik kissed the warm flesh and nosed the fabric higher, kissing as he went, sometimes scraping his teeth, breathing hotly, listening to Charles' ragged breathing and the small whimpers he made. Erik finally uncovered a nipple and he flicked his tongue at it, enjoying hearing Charles swear and clutch at Erik's shoulders. He sucked the nipple into his mouth and Charles stroked his hands across Erik's upper back. 

Erik gasped as Charles' hands touched the super-sensitive skin where his wings used to be. He shuddered with pleasure and was suddenly embarrassed that his erect cock was pressing into Charles' thigh through their pants. "Sorry," he muttered into Charles' chest as the delicious sensation passed. 

"What are you apologizing for?" Charles asked. He finished taking off his shirt and scooted down on the pallet so he and Erik were face to face, Erik on top of him. 

Erik was trying to find the words to explain when Charles touched his upper back again and Erik made an indecent noise and was mortified to find his hips moving of their own accord, rubbing against Charles' clothed hips and the jutting erection of the younger man. 

"Stop, please," Erik gasped when he could talk again. 

Charles immediately withdrew his hands from Erik's back and put them on his upper arms. "Oh no, I'm sorry, I thought you liked that."

Erik chuckled weakly. "I do, believe me. I'm just not going to...last...if you do that."

Charles ran a tongue along his lips. "That doesn't necessarily strike me as a problem."

Erik laughed and kissed Charles, chasing that tempting tongue that kept peeking out of his mouth. He felt Charles' hands moving towards his back again and he pulled up abruptly.

"I want to make you feel good," he said seriously, his eyes searching Charles' face. "Can you show me how?"

Charles face became serious, too, as they gazed at each other. "Every way you touch me feels good," he said steadily, "But I can show you how I...pleasure myself, if you like."

Erik nodded eagerly and laid down next to Charles, his head propped up on his elbow, watching as Charles put a hand in his pants. 

"Oh, I suppose I should--" Charles sat up and quickly shucked off his pants, now completely naked, lying next to Erik. Erik had seen him naked plenty of times before, when they'd been swimming, but he had never before felt free to look his fill, to admire the strength and flexing muscles of Charles’ legs, the pale skin splattered with freckles, his rosy nipples. Erik lightly scraped his fingernails across Charles's chest and was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath from Charles.

Erik watched Charles lick his hand and then wrap it around his erect cock and start stroking. Charles seemed very practiced at this; in fact, he was a lot better at doing it than Erik was. Erik leaned his head against Charles' torso for a moment, watching, then turned his head to kiss Charles' chest. That seemed to be a good move, according to the positive noises Charles made, so Erik moved his head and caught one of Charles' pert nipples in his lips. He rolled the nub around his teeth, which made Charles swear and quicken his pace. 

"Do you want to...?" Charles asked, as if the question were obvious. 

Erik felt panicked for a moment because he didn't know what Charles was asking. "Sure," he said, not knowing what he was agreeing to. 

Charles grasped his hand and led it down to Charles' cock. Erik sucked his breath in at the heat of the silky flesh.

"I'm no good at this," he said. He didn't have the practiced hold Charles did. Anxiety made his heart pound. Was he gripping too hard? Would Charles say, if he was hurting him?

"Relax, love," Charles whispered. "It's all good, and I will certainly tell you if it's not." Erik relaxed a fraction until Charles said, "Just do what you do to yourself."

Erik shook his head. "I don't. Well--earlier today, but that was the first time in years."

Charles stilled. Erik immediately took his hand off Charles' cock. "Did I hurt you?" he said in alarm.

"No, no...you just surprised me," Charles said slowly. "Here." He put his hand on the back of Erik's and guided it back to Charles's cock. He wrapped his hand around the outside of Erik's hand, moving the hand from the outside to stroke Charles' cock. 

"Kiss me," Charles gasped, and Erik turned his head just in time to do that, as Charles spurted all over both their hands and Charles' belly. Charles moaned and thrust his tongue inside Erik's mouth. 

They lay there for a moment, Erik with his head pillowed on Charles' shoulder, until Charles made a noise and Erik reached for the nearest piece of fabric for clean-up, which happened to be his own shirt. He shrugged; he had another shirt. 

They continued to lie there for a few moments, Erik trying hard to ignore the erection in his pants, when Charles said softly, "Erik?"

"Yes?"

"You are so sensitive there...it must have hurt a lot."

Erik closed his eyes tightly and allowed a shudder to run through his body. "You have no idea." 

"Can I--see? Is it okay to ask that?" 

Charles sounded so very timid that even though Erik was normally self-conscious about his scars he found himself nodding and shifting his position to sitting up. Erik had never actually seen the small stubs that used to be his wings; he didn't know if they were as ugly as he thought they were. 

He sat up and waited with trepidation as Charles moved behind him. He felt Charles' fingers and a small moan escaped his lips and he shifted. It was like the bundles of nerves at each point where a wing had been were connected directly to his cock. 

"It's good?" Charles whispered. Erik nodded, wordlessly.

"Let me try..." Charles sat directly behind Erik, with one leg on either side of him. Erik was curious about what he was doing until he felt--oh gods, was that Charles' _tongue_ on the most sensitive spot on Erik's body?

Erik whined and arched his back, his horns pointing backwards over Charles’ head. His eyes rolled up in his head at how fucking _good_ that felt. He reached into his pants to adjust his aching cock. 

"Why are you still wearing pants?" Charles whispered, his hot breath moving across the sensitive skin on Erik's back. Erik quickly wriggled out of them just as Charles started sucking lightly on one of the small protuberances. 

"Uuunnngg," Erik moaned, not able to keep still under the assault. He reached back with his right hand to find Charles' hand, which he yanked forward to his cock. Charles chuckled, a deep sound, and wrapped his hand around Erik's cock as he sucked on the other nerve bundle. 

Both Erik's hands went behind him and landed on Charles' thighs as his back arched involuntarily. He could feel that his thumbs were digging in to Charles' inner thighs and he worried that he would bruise him, but, oh gods, between Charles' mouth and Charles' hand stroking his cock--

Erik came with a loud grunt, half a yell, really. He was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, panting heavily, no longer able to stay upright. He collapsed onto his side right after Charles withdrew his legs from around Erik. 

Charles curled around his back, kissing the side of his neck, carefully avoiding stimulating the stubs where Erik's wings used to be. "That was---you are---amazing," Erik finally managed to say, his eyes glassy and half-open. He saw the dark mark he had inadvertently pressed into one of Charles' thighs with his thumb and winced. "I'm sorry I hurt you there."

"I'm not," Charles said coyly. "Everytime I see it, I will think of you."

Erik gazed at Charles from his sideways position, happy and drowsy. He was filled with the desire to do everything possible with Charles, to fill him up and be filled by him. He wanted to hold him and never let go. He reached an arm out to Charles and clutched him close, breathing in the scent of his hair. 

**

It wasn't much later when he woke to find Charles getting dressed. 

"Hello, sleeping beauty," Charles said to Erik with a smile, as he stepped into his trousers.

"Where are you going?" Erik mumbled drowsily. 

"I need to go cook dinner for my family," Charles said. "Would you like to come?"

Erik rubbed a hand over his face. "They make you cook?"

"Well, not exactly, but if I didn't cook none of us would eat," Charles said with a slight laugh. After a slight pause he said, his voice deceptively light, "Would you like to meet them?"

_No_. Erik knew that if he and Charles walked into the home where his three fairy siblings lived together it would not be a good thing. Charles was looking at him hopefully.

"Maybe another time," Erik said slowly. He hated himself for being evasive, but he didn't know what else he could tell Charles that wouldn't be disastrous. 

Charles looked disappointed, and Erik's heart broke a little in that moment, but the expression was swiftly pushed aside in favor of Charles' usual sunny smile. "Well, you'll be missing out on my famous rabbit stew, and that's your loss." 

He leaned down to kiss Erik on the cheek and Erik caught his hand before he could pull away completely. "We can..." He swallowed, having a hard time articulating his thought. "I mean, do you want to do this again?"

Charles looked at him in surprise. "Gods, yes, I hope so! This, and more. I have quite a few thoughts on the matter. Some ideas. I hope you are, um, open to trying new things." As Charles spoke, a blush crept up his face from his neck. 

Erik felt a deep warmth low in his belly. "Good. Yes. Please."

Charles gave him a slightly more scandalous kiss before he jauntily waved goodbye and left. 

**

"So," said Raven. 

Erik waited for more from her but she just looked at him, in her human form, with one eyebrow arched. He was practicing using the slingshot he had found in one of Hank's cupboards when Raven found him. 

"There's some new gossip," she said calmly, sitting down behind him on the grass. 

"Oh?" Erik had a feeling he knew what was coming. "Who's talking?"

"Oh, you know, forest dwellers," she said airily. 

Erik snorted. She meant animals, of course.

"And what--" Erik let loose a stone at a distant target that he missed, "--are these 'forest dwellers' saying?"

"Apparently the happy one and the horned one have become intimate," Raven said. 

Erik chuckled. "That sounds about right," he said, as he let another stone fly. That one was closer, at least.

Raven was silent for so long that Erik turned to look at her. "Cat got your tongue, birdie?" He tried to keep any challenge out of his tone, but he felt it in the slight lift of his chin. 

She regarded him seriously. "I'm happy for you," she said calmly, "But I also hope you know what the hell you are doing."

Erik looked back at her and kept his warring emotions off his face. He shook his head briefly; not a negation, but a vain attempt to shake off the dark thoughts that seemed determined to weigh down his happiness. 

He didn't blame Raven; his own inner voice was far harsher than hers. 

**

Erik wore himself out that day with physical activity. He was almost desperate not to give his mind a chance to process what had happened; he felt unready to let go of his newfound pleasure. 

Right after Erik had crawled into bed, exhausted, Charles knocked on his door and then entered. "Hi, lover," he said with a grin as he started shucking clothing.

Erik sat up a little. The only light was from the full moon, streaming in the window. It was enough to see but it was dim. "Charles. We're not--you shouldn't call me that."

Charles had just removed his shirt and he looked at Erik in surprise. "Shouldn't call you what? Lover?...Aren't we?"

Erik felt confused. He felt like he hadn't been able to think straight for days and there was something very important he was forgetting. Most importantly, he knew on a visceral level that what Charles said was wrong.

"We shouldn't do this, Charles," he said finally, looking down and away from Charles. He couldn't bear to see him look disappointed. 

Charles didn't say anything for a moment, and Erik chanced to look up. He was expecting anger, or tears, either of which would have been completely justified. He wasn't expecting the look of compassion and understanding on Charles' face. 

"Okay," he said softly, sitting down and taking Erik's hand. "I'm very sorry if I rushed you into anything, Erik."

"No! You--I wanted--" Erik made a noise of frustration. Everything seemed backwards. He felt like a fumbling child and Charles seemed worldly and experienced. 

"I just don't want you to avoid me," Charles said, his blue eyes round and earnest. "That's all I ask." He looked down, his lashes brushing his cheeks, and Erik saw a flash of the boy he was until recently. "Not that I have the right even to ask you for that, but it's what I hope for."

Erik couldn't even promise that, but he squeezed Charles' hand with what he hoped was reassurance. Charles sat a moment longer, and then put his shirt back on. With a sad smile he leaned over and kissed Erik on the cheek and started to get up to go.

Erik didn't let go of his hand. 

Confusion crossed Charles' face.

_This must be what madness feels like_ , Erik thought as he hauled Charles down to his knees and kissed him brutally. Charles' mouth opened as he gasped for surprise and Erik thrust his tongue inside, wanting to taste everything about Charles, wanting to consume him and be consumed.

Lust swept across Erik like a fire. He lunged up until he was also on his knees, facing Charles. He scrabbled at Charles' clothes, wanting them off, _now_. He grasped a fistful of Charles' hair and held his head firmly as he sucked on Charles' collarbone until the younger man whined. He felt Charles' erection against his side and suddenly knew he needed to see it, touch it, taste it. Wrapping one arm around Charles' shoulders, he carefully lowered him until he was on his back. 

"Erik, oh, gods, yes," Charles whispered. Erik pushed him back with a kiss and drew his pants down until his erect penis sprang out, looking almost bluish in the moonlight. Erik wrapped both hands around it, bringing his head low to get closer. He brushed a thumb over the top and heard Charles' sharp inhale and exhale. Curious, he put his lips against the head and Charles whimpered and carded a hand in his hair. Erik swiped his tongue across the top and Charles bucked, clenching Erik’s horns as a drop of precome beaded at the tip. Erik ran his tongue across again to taste it and Charles whispered brokenly, "More, please. More--of your mouth. If you want."

Erik licked the head a few more times before acquiescing with Charles' request and taking it in his mouth. He thought he could fit even more in his mouth, and so he did, and Charles let out a long, delicious moan as Erik slid his mouth down Charles shaft, taking in as much as he could and then letting it slide back out. Charles reached a hand down to grasp the base firmly and Erik wrapped his hand around Charles'. Charles was by then arching his back and moaning sounds that were not quite words as Erik continued to lick and suck his cock. 

"Erik, I'm going to come," Charles panted breathlessly after a minute or so. 

Erik did not respond except to make clear that he and his mouth weren't going anywhere by continuing what he was doing with slightly greater fervor. 

Charles moved his hands to Erik's shoulders and squeezed hard as he came, moaning Erik's name as he spurted inside Erik's mouth. Erik swallowed it all, and kept Charles' penis in his mouth until several moments after Charles' climax had shuddered to its conclusion, when he slowly pulled off. 

Erik pulled himself up and lay on his back next to Charles. Charles immediately turned over and moved down Erik's body until his face was at the same level as Erik's very obvious erection. "You don't have to do that," Erik mumbled, feeling suddenly embarrassed for some reason. 

"Oh, but I very much want to," Charles breathed, shamelessly pushing down Erik's pants and pulling out his cock. 

"Gods, you have a beautiful penis, Erik," Charles breathed and Erik just felt more awkward. Was he supposed to have been praising Charles' penis? 

Erik's anxiety disappeared the minute he felt Charles' warm, soft, wet mouth close around the head. "Fuck, Charles," he choked out as the smooth velvety lips moved down his shaft, and slowly back up. The contrast of the cool air on the wet shaft of his penis against Charles' warm mouth was maddeningly good, and Erik groaned and fisted the sheets to keep himself from thrusting into Charles' face. 

Erik looked down to see what it looked like and was treated to a vision of Charles' red lips, looking purple in the moonlight, stretched around his cock. He was looking right back at Erik and his pupils were dilated so much there was almost no iris. Charles gave him an absolutely wicked look, not breaking eye contact as he hollowed his cheeks and sucked, slowly rising--

Erik came spectacularly, right then, surprising himself as he grunted loudly and groaned through it. He watched with something akin to wonder as Charles swallowed, his pale throat pulsing in the moonlight, and then licked any come left over off the head like he was licking a treat. He tipped his head to the side and rested it on Erik's thigh, smiling up at him contentedly.

Erik looked back with a similarly contented expression, absent-mindedly twirling some of Charles’ hair in his fingers when guilt crashed over him like a wave. He closed his eyes and tried not to react. What was he doing? How did this make any sense at all?

Charles seemed to sense the change in the pattern of Erik's thoughts and Erik felt his weight lift. Erik kept his eyes closed, not wanting to talk, and he heard the sound of Charles getting dressed. He felt the light press of lips to his cheek and when he opened his eyes a moment later, only moonlight remained in the room with him. 

**

"I told Charles we can't be lovers," Erik said to Raven the next day. He was getting better with the slingshot, able to hit smaller targets from farther away. 

"You did?" She gasped. 

"And then we had sex." Erik loaded another stone and flung it before he looked at Raven for a response. 

"Erik, what the hell?" Raven sounded genuinely annoyed with him. Erik loaded and let another stone fly. He deserved her anger, and worse. 

He sighed and turned to her. "I shouldn't have touched him, I know. But I couldn't--I wanted him, like I'd never wanted anyone, and he just..." Erik trailed off, shaking his head. 

"Erik, I'm not angry that you had sex with him," Raven said, exhaling noisily through her nostrils. "I just don't understand why you keep going back and forth on the matter. You're going to give the poor kid a complex."

Erik didn't respond. He looked at the slingshot in his hand. He missed Hank suddenly and swallowed back the pain.

"Raven, you know it can't be me," he said finally. "If the curse will be broken at all, it needs to be True Love. I can't offer Charles that."

Raven stood in her human form, her arms crossed, frowning and shaking her head. "What? No. No, Erik, I don't get that. Why can't it be you? You don't love him?" 

Erik laughed bitterly. "Of course I love him. How could I not? Someone wise once told me how eminently lovable he is."

Raven rolled her eyes heavenward in frustration. "Well then, what's the fucking problem?"

"He doesn't love me." Erik loaded a stone and nailed his target, and abandoned bird's nest, in one smooth motion. A detached part of himself was proud of that even as his chest clenched at the words he'd just said. 

"Whoa, Erik, hang on. Did he tell you that?"

Erik looked at Raven impassively, the only hint of sadness a slight downturn at one corner of his mouth. "He doesn't have to." _Humans can’t love fairies._ Erik paused, looking away from the shape-shifter before continuing. "Raven, now it is more important than ever -- that girl that he likes, can you bring him to her again?"

"Erik..." Raven was rubbing one side of her face with her hand.

"Please, Raven." She just looked at him for a moment, seeming world-weary. "Since I can't undo the curse, this is his best chance. _She_ is his best chance."

"Well, I guess you'd know, it's _your_ fucking magic," she muttered under her breath. "Just promise me you won't go into a jealous rage if this plan of yours works. Because that seems just crazy enough to be something you would do."

"I won't," Erik promised solemnly, although the idea of Charles with anyone else felt like a knife twisting in his gut. He forced himself to smile at Raven. "I just want him to be awake and alive."

Raven shuddered. "No offense, but you look pretty scary when you do that."

**

He knew he shouldn't, but Erik followed Raven and Charles on their seemingly meandering path through the forest. She was in her blue water sprite form and was subtly nudging Charles in the direction she wanted him to go while Charles chattered about Erik, mostly. Erik had loaned Charles his slingshot and Charles was eager to try it. 

Erik watched through the foliage as Charles and Raven laughed about something Erik didn't hear. Charles took a few steps forward and into a clearing - and suddenly Raven was gone. 

Erik saw Charles turn his head in puzzlement, and imagined that he had a frown on his face, although it was too far for Erik to be able to tell for sure. 

"Charles?" 

The voice was feminine, but not Raven. Erik saw Charles' head whip around and Erik turned his head to see where he was looking. 

"Moira!" said Charles, sounding happy. Erik's gut clenched but he forced himself to stay still. A brown-haired girl ran up to Charles and embraced him, laughing. Charles used her momentum to swing her around once, laughing with her. 

Erik could not help making a small noise of disgust. 

Moira's head snapped in the direction of Erik and for a split second, Erik felt like they made eye contact. He quickly moved behind a dark copse of trees, and when he peeked out again she was frowning and shaking her head. 

"What did you see?" Erik heard Charles ask curiously. 

"Oh, probably nothing," Moira replied. "I'm just a little jumpy because everyone says there's a monster living in this forest. But I'm sure that's just a story told to keep people in the village." She smiled and turned back to Charles. "It's been a long time, Charles! How are you?"

Erik realized that to watch them interact any more was not a good idea. Seeing someone else make Charles happy was already painful - he was sure he didn't want to see them kiss, or worse. He crept off as quietly as he could once Moira was no longer looking in his direction.

**

Charles realized this was the second time that Raven had disappeared just when he encountered Moira. He looked around for Raven suspiciously, but couldn’t spot her; unsurprising, considering she could take the form of any animal if Charles had understood her ability correctly. Nevertheless, he wondered why she did that. He turned back to Moira with a smile. He had missed her. 

“What brings you this far into Genosha?” Charles asked. 

Moira grimaced. “Well, I’d hoped I was still in Westchester, but this area is so sparsely populated it really doesn’t matter...usually. What brings you out here, Charles?”

Charles had to laugh at the way she turned the question around. He held up the slingshot that he had borrowed from Erik. “Target practice.”

“Oooh!” Moira was excited to inspect the slingshot. “This is great. I should get one of these. It’s closer to what I’d like to be doing, anyway.” She gave Charles a sad smile. “My father was an archer, before...you know.”

Charles shook his head. “No, I don’t think I do. What’s an archer?”

“Oh! Well, it’s someone who uses a weapon, kind of like this slingshot but bigger, and instead of rocks it uses things called arrows. But arrows were outlawed when I was a baby, so I will never be able to learn archery.” She looked away, wistfully. “The bow -- that’s the part that this slingshot reminds me of -- is sitting in the corner of our house, getting dusty.”

“Why were the--arrows--outlawed?” Charles asked. 

Moira tried to remember. “I think it was something about the prince? I was really young, and my father doesn’t really like to talk about it.”

“Maybe it’s because arrows are dangerous?” Charles suggested. “It sounds like they could be.”

“Well, they probably are, but so is this,” Moira said, moving aside so Charles could see what her long skirt had been hiding his view of: a sword.

“Moira! You are practicing with a sword?” Charles was excited. He’d never seen a sword except in the pictures in his children’s book of human tales. “Can I hold it?”

Moira smiled and offered him the handle. He picked it up and was surprised at how heavy it was. He took a few steps away from her and tried a few swings. Moira grinned ruefully. “You must be in pretty good shape; I know how heavy that is.”

Charles shrugged with a smile. “I’m constantly active. Unless I’m playing chess.”

“Who do you play chess with?” Moira asked, curiously, as she put the slingshot down so she could take the sword back. 

“Oh…” a soft smile played about Charles’ lips. “My friend.”

“Your friend, huh?” Moira smirked at him. “Sounds like a special friend indeed.”

Charles blushed. “He is.”

Moira gave him an odd look and Charles gave her a puzzled look in return. Moira’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh! Charles! I didn’t realize...well. That makes sense actually.”

“What makes sense?”

“Oh, how you never tried anything with me, the way most boys do.”

Charles face still reflected confusion. 

“...because you like boys instead of girls?” Moira prompted gently, grasping his hand and squeezing it. 

“Oh! I--well...he’s not exactly a boy,” Charles said awkwardly. Erik’s gender had never been something Charles had considered as why Charles wanted him. 

Moira’s brow wrinkled. “He’s not? Then--”

“I just mean he’s--adult. A man. Not a boy,” Charles said, his blush deepening. 

“Oh.” Moira was quiet for a moment, watching Charles. She looked like she was going to speak a few times and didn’t, before she finally sighed. “Charles--I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that it’s illegal,” she said in a low voice, “And I don’t want you to think I’m going to tell anyone, because I won’t, but I just hope he’s not---taking advantage, you know?”

Charles stared at Moira a moment, his brow furrowed, as he mentally worked through what she said. “Illegal? Why should anyone care? And no, I don’t think he’s--taking advantage. He doesn’t--” Charles shook his head and trailed off. He stood up, abruptly uncomfortable with the conversation. “Moira, did you want...did you expect me to...kiss you? And--things?”

“Oh!” Moira flushed. “You are awfully direct, Charles. I suppose…” she looked down and swallowed nervously. “I do like you. You are always in a good mood, and…” her eyes flicked up to his face, before she quickly looked away again, inhaling. “...you are very handsome. But I don’t want you to think that’s why I said what I did about your--friend,” she added quickly. “It’s just...you know, a man, who’s older than you, breaking the law...I’m worried, that’s all.”

“Ahh…” Charles had no idea what to say. He gathered that Moira might be interested in him the way he was interested in Erik and it was flattering and confusing. He also didn’t fully understand Moira’s concern about Erik. “Why is it against the law?”

Moira bit her lip and looked away. “I don’t know.”

The silence between them grew awkward as Moira pointedly did not look at him again and Charles remained very confused by her demeanor. “Well, I, uh, should get this slingshot back to, um, its owner.”

Moira nodded, not looking at him, her lips pressed in a tight line, her face red. “Okay. See you.”

Charles walked back towards where he thought Erik’s home was. He wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but he knew Raven would appear soon and guide him. Sure enough, a few minutes after he left Moira, Raven appeared in the water nymph form that had become the most familiar to him. 

“How did it go?” She said with what seemed to him to be forced enthusiasm. 

“How did what go?”

Raven didn't say anything to clarify for a few moments as they walked together through the forest, before finally asking, in a quiet voice, "Do you like her?"

"Ahh...well, yes, but not in the way I think you mean," Charles said with a sad smile, the dappled sunlight through the trees coloring his face. "She likes me, though,” he added, and something crept into his voice that Raven couldn't identify. "She told me that. And that I'm always in a good mood, and that I'm handsome." He looked askance at Raven. "Does any of that sound familiar to you?"

Raven hesitated. She wasn't sure what Charles might have been told, or who had reasons for not telling him anything, and whether or not she agreed with those reasons. After a minute she sighed and decided he deserved the truth, at least about this part. 

"It sounds like your blessings," she admitted. She looked at Charles to see how he would react. He looked thoughtful. 

"Oh, yes, my blessings," he said. "Remind me what those were again?"

Raven snorted. Charles, being manipulative. It should have been annoying but Raven found it charming--she wasn't sure how much of that was a function of the aforementioned blessings. "You were blessed by fairies when you were an infant to be happy, handsome, and charismatic."

"What fairies?" Charles asked quietly. 

Raven looked at him. "The fairies you live with: Alex, Angel, and Sean."

"Ah. So that's why it might have sounded familiar." They continued walking without speaking and were almost back to Charles' home when Charles said abruptly, "So anyone who likes me could just be under the influence of magic."

Raven rubbed her forehead. "I don't know, Charles. I'm not really an authority on these things."

Charles smiled at her and hugged her goodbye and made no comment on the fact that she had taken him back to his home instead of Erik's.

**

It was a few days before Charles brought the slingshot back to Erik. Erik wasn't at home when he arrived, and Charles felt secretly relieved. He had put in a lot of thought over the past few days; what Raven had told him had shed a lot of light on why Erik always seemed so conflicted towards him. Erik had only ever been influenced by his blessings; he didn't actually care for Charles. And because it was illegal, it would be best for Erik if Charles left him alone. The more Charles thought about it, the more it seemed that Erik had been trying to tell him something like this for a while. So Charles had resolved to draw away from Erik, even though the thought of not seeing Erik made him feel almost physically sick. He put the slingshot on a windowsill and turned to go just in time to see Erik arriving. 

"Erik," Charles said. His voice sounded surprisingly even, if flat, to himself.

Erik slowed as he approached, face impassive as always. "Charles."

The air grew thick with tension as neither man spoke for a moment. Erik frowned and took a step towards Charles. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes. No," Charles said. Erik halted, some unidentifiable emotion rippling across his face. 

"I'm sorry that I misunderstood," Charles said quietly, even as he wanted to cry out how unfair it was. He should have left right then, but he felt frozen in place. 

Erik stepped closer, looking over Charles' face carefully. He seemed to understand immediately that something had changed in Charles, and it seemed that he had almost been expecting it. "Moira," he said quietly. He looked away. "She's--" he stopped abruptly. 

Charles nodded curtly, as if he understood what Erik meant, suddenly wanting and needing to leave. He turned on his heel and did just that. 

That night, Erik got drunk off the last of Hank's mead.

**

Erik did not see Charles again for a long while. He knew Charles' eighteenth birthday was coming up, and he had frequent nightmares as the date got closer; nightmares wherein a grown Sebastian ripped off his wings and laughed at him; nightmares in which he was kissing Charles and he turned into Shaw. But the worst nightmare was the one where Erik was somehow restrained as Charles was pierced by an arrow and was not just put to sleep, but bled to death, just out of Erik's reach. 

Erik would wake every time from that dream and fervently hope that his magic did not include any precognitive capacity, because he never saw anything good when he dreamed about Charles' eighteenth birthday.

Two nights before Charles' eighteenth birthday, the day Erik was dreading, Charles appeared on his doorstep. He had obviously been drinking, his lips stained with red wine. He had a big silly grin on his face and he stood outside calling "Erik!" loud enough to wake the whole forest. 

Erik opened the door tiredly. He was only wearing pants, as he had been dressing for bed and it was a comfortable late summer night. "Hello, Charles." His eyes met the younger man's and he was startled by the intense and determined expression in his blue eyes that didn't match the levity of his lips.

"How's Moira?" Erik forced himself to ask. 

Charles’ smile faltered a little bit as he walked inside and stood a little too close to Erik. Erik tried to back away as subtly as he could. "I don't want to talk about Moira. Erik, I've missed you. I've missed playing chess with you, I've missed drinking with you, I've missed your cock..." Charles stepped up to Erik and boldly grasped the front of his pants. 

"Whoa," said Erik, stepping back hastily. "Charles, I thought--you know we can't--"

"I don't know anything of the sort," Charles snapped, his eyes blazing. "I tried to understand, Erik, but honestly, I want you and I know you want me. I don't care--"

"I wouldn't--Charles, I couldn't take it if..." Erik found it almost impossibly difficult to voice one of his worst fears--a fear he wouldn't even let himself think about, because it didn't matter, because he shouldn't be with Charles anyway. 

"Just for tonight," Charles said softly. He grasped Erik's hand and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of Erik's hand. When Erik didn't pull away, Charles slowly turned his hand over and pressed a kiss to his palm, and then moved to the inside of Erik's wrist. 

"Charles..." said Erik. He heard the tremble in his own voice, and then from somewhere inside him, a steely anger surfaced. He stilled and stared at Charles, feeling himself get hot as he was suddenly struck by the unfairness of it all. He was trying to _save_ Charles by pushing him away, dammit, and he was tired of trying to be strong and deny himself the pleasure of Charles' young, hard, beautiful body. 

He yanked his wrist out of Charles' grasp and pushed the younger man down. Charles, caught by surprise, stumbled and landed awkwardly on one hand and knee. Erik pushed his pants down and pressed his erect cock hard against the side of Charles' face. 

"Is this what you want?" Erik snarled. He barely recognized his own voice. 

Charles had pushed himself so that he was kneeling and he was starting to say "Yes," when Erik shoved his cock in the younger man's mouth, pushing in, feeling the pain of scraping teeth and not caring because as much as he craved the sweet pleasure he knew he could have from Charles, he also knew that he deserved the pain for wanting it. 

Erik carded both hands through Charles' hair and grasped tightly, forcing his cock in the young man's mouth as far as it would go. Charles grasped Erik's thighs for balance, trying to adjust and open his mouth as Erik thrust his hips forward, forcing his cock down the tight throat. He couldn't stop saying, "Is this what you want," although the words felt distant, almost meaningless, as he saw a red mist on the edges of his vision. He was starting to lose himself in feeling like a rutting animal when Charles made a choked, gurgling noise and dug his nails into Erik's legs, hard. 

Erik snapped back to reality and let go of Charles' hair. Charles pulled back, falling backwards and scrabbling away from him. His face was red and he coughed several times, tears running down his cheeks. 

Erik suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe as he flashed back to another time, another place, as he vividly remembered seeing Sebastian sneer at him and mock his desire, and then the incredible agony shooting from his shoulder blades as his wings were sawed off. 

Was he any different? 

"I’m a monster," he whispered, because that's what he was; that's what Sebastian had made him.

Charles was sitting on the sleeping pallet, looking at Erik like he'd never seen him before. "You're scaring me," Charles whispered, and then winced, touching his throat; it obviously hurt him to speak. 

Erik put his hands on his face. "You should be scared of me. Charles, I'm sorry. I didn't mean--I didn't want to hurt you." The wild anger that had been filling Erik had leeched away completely and he felt empty and brittle without it. His legs trembled and he sat down right where he was standing.

_"Why,"_ said Charles, coughing. "Why do you make everything so difficult?" His voice was thin, and he was curled up, at the far end of the sleeping pallet, eyeing Erik warily. 

Erik had nothing to say. He felt lower than a worm. He was the worst form of life that there was. He kept his face in his hands; he was too full of shame to look at Charles. He felt his hands get wet before he realized why that was and that silent sobs were wracking his torso. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." 

And then Charles was there, his arms around him, making soothing noises. Erik wanted to push him away, knowing he was undeserving of any affection, but he couldn't bring himself to raise a hand to Charles after what he had done a few minutes ago. 

"Erik," Charles sighed. Erik finally lifted his head, his face tear-stained and his eyes red, to look at Charles dully. Charles gazed back at him, levelly, searching Erik's face for something. Erik knew he deserved anger, or perhaps fear, but Charles looked only sad. "I'm sorry, my friend," he whispered. "I was just hoping...I just have a feeling that everything will change soon. My family has been telling me we need to go somewhere, the day after tomorrow, and..." he shook his head. "I felt like tonight was the last chance we would have to be together." He was silent for a moment, then looked up at Erik. "I didn't think about how hard it would be for you. It wasn't fair of me."

Erik started to speak but Charles stilled him with a gentle finger to his lips. "Please--before you...ask me to leave, I just want...one kiss?"

Erik closed his eyes and felt a few more tears slip down his face as he nodded. Charles pulled him until they were lying side-by-side on the floor of the little home before gently pressing his lips against Erik's.

The kiss felt like water to a drowning man. Erik felt the soft press and kissed back, gently, slowly, wanting this to last. He stroked Charles' hair where it curled on the side of his neck, trying to convey apology with the tenderness of his gesture. He could feel the kiss drawing to a close when Charles opened his mouth, just a bit, and Erik mirrored the motion. A soft moan escaped Charles' mouth and he slipped a very tentative tongue against Erik's lower lip. Erik let his tongue dance against Charles', not trying to overpower, or claim, but instead just focusing on the intimacy and trying to mentally communicate to Charles how much Erik cared, and valued him, and felt abjectly sorry for having scared or hurt him. 

And then he was on top of Charles, kissing more, feeling helpless to stop his body as the kiss grew deeper...with Charles' enthusiastic participation. The lack of control scared Erik and he shuddered, still kissing, as sobs threatened. 

"It's okay." Charles breathed as Erik panted, "I love you." Erik felt Charles still at the words and he pushed down his disappointment that he knew the feeling wasn't reciprocated--he realized it didn't matter. He loved Charles, and Charles wanted him, and that was enough. 

The epiphany was like a ray of sunshine to Erik. "I love you," he whispered again, peppering kisses along Charles' jaw. Charles didn't seem to know what to say; Erik thought he might be uncomfortable but his hands were caressing Erik's shoulders and it felt so good and so right that Erik pushed his fear of rejection aside. He had the rest of his life to mourn but this wonderful boy--man--was in his arms now and he wanted Erik and that _was_ enough.

They turned over so Charles was on top, and Erik couldn't see Charles' eyes because of the fringe of brown curls that blocked the light. He could see his lips, though; his lovely, albeit chapped, red lips, as they stretched into a slow smile. "I think maybe you want more than one kiss," he murmured, leaning down to kiss Erik's neck. 

"Anything you want," Erik said. "I love you."

"Yes, you said that," Charles said. There was a funny sound in his voice and Erik thought maybe he shouldn't say it again--but he could and would _feel_ it, and revel in the fact that it was possible for him to feel that way about anyone--even if the feeling was not reciprocated. 

Erik ran his hands down Charles' shoulders and back, "Anything," he said again, in a low voice. 

Charles was thinking, Erik could tell that, even if he couldn't see the younger man's eyes. "Undress me," he finally said, in a low voice that was not quite a whisper.

Erik silently stood up and pulled Charles to a standing position as well. He undressed him reverently, slowly; kissing and treating Charles with all the gentleness he deserved. When at last he was naked, Erik led him to the sleeping pallet and lay him down. Charles' penis was erect and darkly flushed and Erik began to kiss it but Charles' hand stilled him. 

"I, uh, at home there's a thing I like," Charles whispered, and Erik could see him blushing as he tried to convey what he wanted. "I sometimes put a finger--inside myself, and I thought..." 

Erik nodded and his heart pounded as he moved the hand that had been resting on Charles naked hip lower and between his legs. Charles reached for the hand. "Um," he said, drawing Erik's hand to his mouth and sucking Erik's index finger into his mouth. He was perfunctory about it until he noticed that Erik was staring at his finger in Charles' mouth with parted lips. The corner of Charles’ mouth turned up and he started licking the finger slower while keeping eye contact with Erik. Finally, he pulled the glistening finger out of his mouth and smirked. "It's easier if it's wet," he explained, as he released Erik's hand and opened his legs a bit more. 

Erik kissed Charles' hipbones while he sought Charles' entrance with his wet index finger. He found the small sphincter and was intrigued to feel how Charles gasped and flexed the muscles in his thighs when Erik nudged the opening. Erik moved his face lower and started kissing the sensitive flesh of Charles' inner thighs as he pushed the tip of his finger inside Charles. 

It slid inside easily, and Charles made a soft noise of appreciation. His cock was hard and had a bead of precome at the tip. Erik pushed more of his finger inside slowly as he angled his face to lap up that bit of precome, which was apparently a surprise to Charles, as he gasped again and said "Erik," in a strangled voice. 

Erik wanted to hear his name like that again, so he pushed in further and licked the head of Charles’ cock. Charles pulled his knees up and spread his legs farther, his head tossing from side to side. Erik kept sliding the finger inside until he couldn't anymore because his of the rest of his hand. He felt Charles clenching around his finger and he dragged his finger out a ways before slowly pushing it back in. 

He did this a few more times before an idea started to form in his mind, and idea which made his cock so hard it ached. There's no way Charles would want that, he thought, and almost didn't say anything. But when Charles said, "More, Erik, please," Erik's heart started pounding. 

"More what?" he asked, his voice guttural and animalistic. He cringed at the sound but Charles didn't seem to notice. 

"Another finger," Charles whispered, his cheeks darkly flushed, and his pupils blown wide. 

Erik pulled his finger out long enough to suck on his second finger and make sure it was plenty wet before he put both of them inside Charles. Charles was biting his lip, rocking into the movement, staring at Erik feverishly as Erik watched his two fingers going in and out of Charles. 

"Charles. I want to--can I--put my cock there?"

Charles caught his breath and looked at Erik with wide eyes but nodded, apprehensively at first, but with growing enthusiasm as Erik kept finger-fucking him. Charles grasped his own cock almost absent-mindedly and started stroking himself. Erik licked around the head of his cock as Charles did that, making Charles arch his back in pleasure and moan.

Erik's cock was aching to be inside Charles. Erik carefully drew his fingers out and noticed that the saliva wasn't really lasting as a lubricant. He tried to think of what he might have that would work better and all he really had was a bit of rendered fat gathered from the inside of rabbit skins. He'd been thinking of making some candles, but sacrificing the candles was nothing compared to being able to slide his cock into Charles. 

"Be right back," he whispered to Charles' penis with a kiss as he retrieved the small container as quickly as he could. 

"What are you..." Charles mumbled, not wanting his bliss interrupted. 

"I wanted something slick," Erik explained. "So I don't hurt you when I put my cock in your ass." 

Charles' lips parted when Erik said that, and he cocked his head, noticing that. "I thought it was called a penis," Charles said cheekily.

"Yes, well, right now it's a cock," Erik said, with no further explanation. "And I'm going to fuck you with it," he added, feeling a warm curl of pleasure in his stomach to see that Charles liked to hear that. He knelt between Charles' legs and kissed and licked the head of the penis that Charles was still lazily jerking while he slicked up his own cock. For good measure, he put the same two fingers, well-coated with the rendered fat, inside Charles again to get Charles as slick as possible.

He decided Charles was ready when he whined, "Please, Erik, _fuck me_." Erik pulled his fingers out and put his cock just at Charles' entrance, slightly touching. As slowly as he could stand, he pushed his cock in. He hadn't even gotten the head completely inside before Charles was grasping at his shoulders saying urgently, "Slow, slow," and Erik stopped, holding agonizingly still while Charles' body adjusted to the invasion. 

"Am I hurting you?" Erik whispered. 

Charles scrunched his face up and refused to answer. Erik took that as a yes and started to back out when Charles snapped, "Don't you _dare_." 

Erik swallowed a chuckle and stopped pulling out. When Charles nodded, he slowly started pushing in again only for Charles to say, "wait!" again in a strangled voice. Erik paused on arms that were straining and trembling. He was dripping sweat on Charles already with the effort of holding back. He thought about just pushing it in, hard and fast, but the need to respect Charles' boundaries was a stronger impetus. 

"I need..." Charles looked at Erik beseechingly. "Can you talk to me?"

"Talk to you?" Erik said blankly.

"Tell me...about...what you are doing, what you want to do," Charles said, almost shyly, his lashes brushing against his flushed cheeks as he closed his eyes. 

"I'm--fucking you. I want to--fuck, Charles, I just want to slam my cock inside you," Erik gritted out, adding hastily, "but I won't, I just--"

Charles had his hand around his cock again. "Put more in," he said, his eyes bright.

Erik complied, a little too quickly, judging by the gasp Charles made after that. He stopped again and then waited for Charles to nod before pushing in a little bit more.

Charles made a pained noise and Erik stopped again. He tried not to feel too frustrated-- less than a third of his cock was inside Charles. 

"You feel so fucking good," he panted into Charles' neck. "I can't wait to sink my entire cock into you, to fill you up."

Gods, he hoped this was what Charles wanted to hear. It seemed so, because the younger man whispered, "yes, Erik, yes," and Erik took that to mean he should push his cock in a bit more, which he did. Something changed then, and Charles arched his back and said "more, yes, keep coming, slowly," and Erik did as requested, slowly but steadily sinking his cock into Charles until his balls were against Charles' ass. 

"More, please," Charles panted. 

"There is no more, you beast," Erik said, a smile creeping onto his lips as Charles frowned prettily. 

"Then fuck me," Charles said, meeting Erik's gaze with a slightly stubborn look. 

Holding eye contact, Erik pulled his cock out a minute bit and then pushed it back in. Charles nodded at him, slack-jawed, his irises almost swallowed by the black of his pupils. 

"Uunnnggg," Charles said, lifting his knees and putting them on Erik's shoulders. This worked well for Erik, since he could fit a little bit deeper. 

He continued to move in and out slowly, gradually speeding up as he gauged from Charles' expression how much he could take and what he wanted. Charles had his hand wrapped around his own cock, jerking himself hard and furious, when he muttered, "I'm getting close, please fuck me, fuck me hard, Erik," and Erik finally let his body do what it had been wanting to do, snapping his hips against Charles, hard and fast. 

Charles' eyes rolled back and his ass clenched as he came, and the feeling of that was almost enough to bring Erik over the edge, except that while Charles was clenching Erik couldn't move his cock. Once Charles seemed through most of it Erik started moving again, wary of over-stimulating Charles but also feeling an almost primal urge to come inside him and fill him up. Charles' soft whimpers were what finally wrenched Erik's climax out of him, not a minute after Charles had come. 

After Charles had put his legs down, Erik collapsed on him, still buried inside for the time being. Erik was overcome with such a feeling of tenderness for Charles that he could barely breathe. He pulled his cock out of Charles carefully and moved to lay beside him, wrapping the young man tightly in his arms, despite the fact that they were both sweaty and sticky and Charles was half asleep. "I wish I could be with you forever," Erik whispered into Charles' damp, curly hair. "I wish we could live together. I wish we could do this everyday."

Charles didn't reply, which didn't surprise Erik, as he thought Charles was asleep. But after a few moments had passed, Charles said in a small voice, "Do you mean that?"

Erik hugged Charles tighter. "Of course. I love you, Charles."

Charles sat up. "Okay. Yes. I want to do that."

Erik smiled, so happy to hear Charles say that, even though...

"You should tell your family then," Erik said, feeling a sob rising in his throat, which he hid by kissing Charles on the temple. "Tell them, and come back to me."

"Yes!" Charles was excited, jumping up and getting dressed. "Whatever they wanted me to do on my birthday, I won't do it, or I will and then I'll come back--whatever, but I promise, Erik, I will come live with you." 

His eyes were so shiny with determination and happiness that Erik felt confused for a moment. He almost believed Charles. Almost.

Charles bent down to kiss Erik goodbye and Erik smiled and swallowed his pain. At least they'd had this.


	4. Westchester

Erik tried to be calm, as the day stretched into night. He did his usual things; he ran, he spearfished some dinner, he bathed. Although he did he best to appear normal on the outside, his emotions were a roiling mess. After he had done everything he could think of, he just stood outside his front door and waited.

Raven came by around sunset, arriving in her natural bird form and changing into her human form with a sound of fluttering feathers, the form she usually used when speaking to Erik.

“Hello,” said Erik calmly, calmly, calmly.

She eyed him cautiously. “About a day now.”

He nodded, his eyes scanning the tree line of the forest. Raven started to say something else when she cocked her head, listening. “Oh,” she breathed. “That’s what you were waiting for.”

Erik nodded, his lips pressed together in a tight line. He started to hear what Raven’s acute hearing had noticed before him, the sound of a large animal or human walking quickly and loudly through the forest. She put a hand on his shoulder briefly, giving him a look of--sympathy? encouragement?--before she changed back into a bird and flew away.

Erik was sure she hadn’t gone far and would be watching and listening. But it seemed the hour of truth was upon him, and wanting privacy seemed almost silly.

Charles stalked into the clearing in front of the hobbit home, slowing abruptly as he saw Erik. His cheeks were red and his eyes and hair was wild.

He strode to Erik and grabbed him by the shoulders. “It’s not true, is it?” he said, almost shouting before he seemed to catch himself and lowered his voice. “Erik...please tell me it’s not true?”

Erik knew, horribly, that it was probably completely true. “What did they tell you?” he forced himself to ask. His voice sounded cold, and he immediately wished he had said anything else.

“They said I was the prince of Westchester. They told me--I have _parents_ , Erik!”  
Charles let go of Erik and started pacing, rubbing his forehead. Then he stopped and rubbed his whole face and said the next sentence in a rush. “They told me I was cursed as an infant by an evil fairy, and that I was going to be struck by an arrow and sleep forever on my eighteenth birthday.” He raised his head slowly to look at Erik. “Is any of that true?”

“It’s all true,” Erik said, each word a new pain in him. He was clenching his hands into fists so hard his fingernails were stabbing into his palms.

Charles closed his eyes and shook his head as if he thought he might be having a nightmare. “The last thing they told me can’t be true, though. It can’t be.” He opened his eyes and looked at Erik. “They told me the name of the fairy who did this was Erik.”

Erik didn’t know how much it would physically hurt to have his heart broken. He blinked several times in rapid succession to keep the tears he felt prickling behind his eyes from falling. “Charles. Please, I tried to undo it, I tried everything I could to save you.”

“So it wasn’t you who placed the curse?” The hope that shot through Charles’ eyes for a moment felt like a punch to the gut.

“It was me,” Erik said quietly, almost a whisper. He forced himself to keep his eyes on Charles’ face even as it crumbled. He stepped towards the younger man instinctively, seeking to soothe, to comfort, but Charles flinched and stepped back, shaking his head in horror.

For a moment Erik thought Charles might punch him, and the thought gave him a dark satisfaction. He deserved that, and worse. But Charles just seemed to want to get away from him as fast as possible, and Erik couldn’t really fault him for that, either.

**

Raven flew alongside Charles as he ran back to his family, although he did not acknowledge her presence or possibly even notice. He entered the dilapidated cabin and slammed the door behind him, panting and glaring around.

“Whoa, Charles,” Sean said, laughing upon seeing him. Sean liked to smoke some of the pungent weeds that grew in the sunnier parts of the forest, and he appeared to be under the influence of that now.

“I’m going to Westchester,” Charles snapped. Sean stared at him in shock as Angel and Alex entered the room.

“Charles, I’ve never seen you--not happy,” Angel said with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

Alex knew what was wrong. Earlier that day he was the one who had been coaxed into telling Charles where they were planning to go the next day, and why. “We’re not supposed to go until tomorrow,” he reminded Charles.

“I don’t bloody care!” Charles snapped, making all of them take a step back. “I apparently don’t have much choice in my own life, and I’m going to do what I can. And what I _can_ do is go and meet my parents before--” he started to choke on his words and he cut himself off.

“But it’s really far,” Sean whined. “if we leave now, we won’t get there until tomorrow morning.”

“I didn’t ask you to come,” Charles said angrily, before the look on Sean’s face gave him pause and he forced himself to speak more calmly. “I--I’m sorry, Sean...all of you. I am grateful that you have taken care of me for all these years, but if I only have a few hours left, I’d really like to meet my real parents. Of course I’d like you to come with me,” he added softly.

Charles tried to push down the ugly, jagged feeling of betrayal that arose in him when he thought about Erik. It would be better to have his adopted fairy family to travel with; they would help keep his mind off...people he shouldn’t think about.

Within the hour, the small party was ready to leave, although there was quite a bit of huffing from Angel regarding a cake she had been trying to make for Charles. Raven hesitated with indecision about whether or not she should go with them or go tell Erik what was happening, and ultimately decided that she would be able to catch up to them if she had to, although it would mean flying all night. So she headed back to tell Erik.

**

“So, they’re going tonight. What do you expect me to do?” Erik asked. He was sitting in the exact spot Charles had left him standing. He had been thinking about never moving again when Raven showed up.

Raven stared at him incredulously. “What happened to all those ‘I love you, Charles’s’”? She asked snidely. “Don’t you want to save him? Or at least try?”

He looked away. “I told you, it can’t be me.”

“Yes, you did,” she said, nodding and speaking like one would to a misbehaving dog. “You sure told me that. Because it needed to be someone else, right?”

“Moira,” Erik surged to his feet. “Raven, we have to find Moira.”

She sighed. “Glad you joined the conversation.”

**

Visiting Moira took a little stealth, and unfortunately a lot of time. The village was near the castle in Westchester, after all, nearly half a day’s journey from Genosha. Fortunately, Raven knew where the human girl lived (because once Raven had started spying she couldn’t stop.) Unfortunately, it was the middle of the night when they arrived at the domicile she shared with her parents.

Erik was in favor of just barging in and taking her, whether she wanted to go or not, but Raven explained gently how that would probably not be a good idea. She suggested that perhaps Moira’s family would be less likely to send a lynch mob after a monster if they thought she had left willingly with a beau.

“I’m supposed to act like a beau?” Erik snapped. “I don’t even---oh, I see.” Erik interrupted himself because halfway through his sentence, Raven changed into a human form but not her typical blond female human form--she changed into Charles.

“Hello, Erik,” she said in Charles’ voice, with Charles’ cheeky grin. The world tilted on its axis for a moment and Erik felt a little bit sick.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” he said weakly, trying not to stare.

“Honestly? I didn’t either, until I did it,” Raven/Charles said, before adding thoughtfully, “You know if he does sleep forever, I could still take this form and you and I could--”

“Don’t you dare finish that thought,” Erik snapped. He pointed at the house. “Moira.”

Raven threw pebbles at one of the windows of the house until a head appeared and the window opened. “Moira,” Raven/Charles whispered.

“Next window, jerk,” the young boy said, yawning.

Raven/Charles shrugged and moved to the next window down, continuing the rain of pebbles. After a few moments, Moira opened the window. “Charles?” She whispered in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

“I, um.” Raven’s brain was racing as she abruptly remembered how they had parted last time. “You were right. About my friend. I--just want to talk?”

“What are you doing?” hissed Erik. Raven threw a pebble at him.

Moira was silent for a moment. “Charles…”

“Please, Moira,” Raven said, trying to imbue her voice with as much Charles-ness as she could, though she was painfully aware that she didn’t have his blessings.

After a long moment, Moira sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll get dressed and meet you outside in five minutes.”

It was more like ten minutes, and Moira had clearly brushed her hair and put something red on her lips- Raven felt both guilty and triumphant for successfully fooling her.

Raven heard a ripping noise behind her and started to turn and ask Erik what he was doing when he was on Moira, stuffing a piece of fabric in her mouth to gag her and tying her hands behind her back with a long strip of what used to be his shirt.

“Erik, what the fuck!” Raven exclaimed, turning back into her usual human form in her shock. Moira’s eyes widened and she turned to run but Erik caught her effortlessly, tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

He turned to her impassively. “Let’s go.”

“Erik, _no._ ” Raven stood in front of him with her arms crossed as Moira kicked and yelled into the improvised gag Erik had put into her mouth. “You can’t treat her like that!”

“I don’t see why not.” Erik started walking towards the castle, which was just visible in the pre-dawn light.

“She’s not going to do anything you want if you treat her like that,” Raven pointed out, reasonably.

“I _won’t_!” Moira yelled through her gag, the sound muffled but the words clear.

Erik frowned. “She will if she wants Charles to live,” he said, but his confidence in his course of action was wavering.

“Fuck Farls,” Moira snarled through her gag. Erik glowered and stopped walking.

“If I put her down, she’ll run,” he said to Raven.

Raven nodded, considering, and took the form of a horse. Erik put Moira over Raven’s back, still tied and gagged but now slung across the back of a horse instead of on his shoulder. He rolled his shoulder. Much better for him, and the girl was probably at least marginally more comfortable.

Raven stamped her foreleg in annoyance. Erik thought perhaps she’d been intending that Moira should sit upright, but it still didn’t seem to be a practical solution to him. Erik grinned at her with all his teeth. “Good idea, Raven. We should hurry; we’re wasting time,” he added as he smacked the horse on its rump.

Raven started and turned her horse’s head to glare at him. Erik couldn’t help feeling amused; clearly this wasn’t what Raven intended but if she changed form now, Moira would fall on the ground. Resentfully, Raven started walking towards the castle.

**

King Shaw heard the rustling noise in the middle of the night and even in his half-awake state, he knew what it was -- not his wife in her cell, as it sometimes was -- no, it was his most prized trophies struggling in their display case and the idea of what that meant chilled Shaw to his bones. “He’s coming,” he whispered into his empty sleeping chamber. He stood up.

“He’s coming,” Shaw said to the guard outside his door, in the hall. The man nodded stoically, having no idea who the king was talking about--but also knowing that to say that would be unwise.

“Ready my personal guard,” Shaw continued, “and call the archers. He will not survive this time.”

The guard could not remember the last time the archers had been called. He kept the surprise off his face and went to do as he was ordered.

Shaw changed out of his bedclothes and sat on his throne in the pre-dawn chill, waiting. Last time, he’d let the fairy live. He would not make that mistake again.

**

Charles, Alex, Angel, and Sean arrived at the castle in Westchester a little after dawn, after walking all night. Charles was energized to be there, almost frantic, but the fairies were barely able to stay awake and kept staggering into each other. Charles explained to the guards at the castle gate who he was and was surprised that gaining entrance to the throne room was not hard at all.

Charles walked in to the throne room, the fairies just trailing him, and his heart leapt into his throat as he saw the man sitting there on the throne.

“Father?” he whispered, tentatively joyful.

The man stared at him. “Who are you?”

“Father, it’s me--Charles. Your son.” Charles swallowed and boldly took a step closer to the throne, his heart pounding. “You sent me to live with the fairies…”

The man continued to stare at him and Charles wasn’t sure what else to say. The man suddenly snorted a laugh. “You’re early,” he said finally, and beckoned a guard over to him. He whispered to the man briefly and then said audibly, “Take _Charles_ to see his mother.”

“Oh, well, that’s...lovely,” Charles said, a little confused by the man’s reaction. He didn’t seem at all glad to see Charles. Maybe he was busy, Charles rationalized. Running a kingdom was bound to be a lot of work. Nevertheless, something ugly twisted in Charles’ gut.

“The fairies can stay,” Shaw said as Charles was led away. Charles tried to grin at his adopted family reassuringly as he was led away, but the guard seemed to be in a hurry to get Charles to his mother, pulling on Charles’ arm insistently.

Once Charles was gone, Shaw glared at the fairies, his former childhood friends. “You were supposed to solve a problem of mine, and instead you made it worse.”

Alex, Angel and Sean exchanged looks of confusion. “Um, Your Majesty, sorry, but--what?” Sean said.

“Kill them,” Shaw said dismissively.

The fairies’ jaws dropped as guards behind them pulled out swords. Angel snapped out of shock and into motion the quickest, unfurling her wings from her shoulders and rising into the air. She whistled, and Sean belatedly did the same as he made the supersonic sound that he always needed to do in order to fly ( _Alex_ said it was a crutch, but _Alex_ couldn’t fly at all). Angel and Sean each grasped one of Alex’s arms and lifted him as he concentrated and sent a blast of energy towards the guards.

It was hard, but Angel and Sean managed to fly high enough with Alex to clear the guards, who were stabbing upwards with their swords, looking ridiculous. Once they were clear, they flew out of the drawbridge and made it as far as they could away from the castle before they tumbled down together in a heap.

King Shaw fumed, his hands clenching the arms of his throne. “Where are my fucking archers?” he screamed. Fucking flying fairies!

**

Charles did not really understand that he was being put into a cell in the dungeon until after it had been done--even then, he thought, _Someone will realize the mistake and come for me soon._

“Charles?” A voice said, tentatively.

He whirled around. “Who’s there?”

“Prince Charles? Is that you?” The voice was quiet and tentative, definitely female, but not a voice that Charles ever remembered hearing before. Nevertheless, Charles heard pain in it; the voice almost broke on his name.

“It’s me,” he said softly. “Who is speaking, please?”

The only response was quiet sobbing for a moment. “It’s me, Charles--your mother. The--Queen. Emma Frost.”

“Mother?” Charles whispered, feeling slightly faint. “Where are you?”

A pause, then: “I’m in the cell next to you.” Charles looked at the wall and saw there was a grate, high up, which is where he was hearing the voice from. He stood back from the wall and saw light between two of the stones. He got closer to that and peered in with one eye to see a blue eye peering back at him. He pulled back abruptly and laughed a little, startled, and then tried not to let it become a sob as he realized what this meant.

“You’re very handsome,” his mother said, with a small hiccup. He realized she was trying hard not to cry, too, and he ached to comfort her.

“Through no fault of mine, I’m afraid,” he said lightly and was rewarded with a small sound of amusement. He peered through the crack to see her and saw that she was extremely pale, her hair blonde-white and her skin so pale it was almost translucent. She was extremely thin, as well. “Why are you here?” he asked as gently as he could.

She didn’t respond for a moment, but it seemed to Charles that she didn’t speak much usually and was choosing her words carefully. “Your father, King Shaw, became paranoid after he sent you away. He decided I was a witch who could read his mind and put ideas in his head, and he locked me up in this dungeon so I couldn’t influence him.”

She paused, but Charles felt that she was going to say more, so he didn’t speak. What could one say to that, anyway? “He couldn’t kill me, because he only has a right to the throne through me. He still hauls me out and dresses me in diamonds for important enough events.” She paused. “Although I think it’s been a couple years since he last did that. It’s hard to keep track in here.”

Charles leaned his forehead against the stone. “Oh, mother, I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

“No, please, Charles,” she said, getting close to the crack again so she could see him. Charles obligingly pulled back so she would be able to see more than just his one eye. “I’m so happy that you are here. He was expecting that those fairies would kill you out of sheer neglect.” She didn’t say anything for a while as Charles closed his eyes at her words. After a few minutes she spoke again. “How long until your eighteenth birthday?”

Charles felt a lump in his throat. “It’s today, mother.”

He heard her inhale sharply. “Oh, Charles.”

**

Erik slowed as he and Horse-Raven with her human cargo reached the pile of dust-covered people. He frowned as he thought he recognized--”Angel?”

All three dusty figures sat upright. “Erik?” Angel said incredulously.

Erik couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous and guilty as he stared at the siblings he hadn’t laid eyes on in - almost eighteen years? They were all adults now, and yet they seemed somehow still youthful to him.

Abruptly, Erik realized what was missing. “Where’s Charles?” he asked sharply.

The three fairies looked at each other, and then all started talking at once. Erik gathered only that Shaw was an evil bastard, which did not surprise him at all, until Alex said, slowly, “I saw something when we were flying that I think you should know about.”

Everyone looked at Alex. He steeled himself and continued. “There was a--display case, a big one, in this small room off the throne room. It had--well, wings, in it. They looked like your wings,” he added to Erik, the last part in a low voice, “and they were--moving.”

Angel looked at Erik like she was seeing him for the first time. “Your wings--Erik--did Sebastian _cut off your wings?_ ”

“Gods, Erik,” Sean said, putting his hand over his mouth.

“We didn’t know,” said Alex. “We just thought--”

“You thought I ran away for no reason?” Erik snapped, but the fire had gone out of him. He had never come back for his brothers and sister, and they had told themselves a story about it that made it--not hurt as badly.

He realized, now that he was thinking about it, that he could _feel_ his wings, calling to him. “I think...I could get them back,” he said slowly. And then like lightning, it occurred to him that if he could get his wings back, maybe he would have the strength and control over his magic to be able to remove the curse from Charles.

Hope blossomed in Erik so quickly that it terrified him. He took a deep breath and tried to steady his nerves.

“If I can get my wings back, I will, but I also need to get Charles out of this castle before sunset. Do you know where they took him?”

“Shaw said they were taking him to see his mother,” Sean said with a helpless shrug.

Raven transformed into a human at that moment, startling Angel, Alex, and Sean and making Erik leap to catch the still-bound Moira out of midair before she fell on the ground.

“I know where the queen is,” Raven said proudly, in her human form. She saw where Erik and Moira were glaring daggers at her and said belatedly, “Oh! Whoops.”

**

It was late morning before a plan was formulated, which frustrated Erik no end, but he had to acknowledge that especially since he had been awake all night with no sleep (as had they all) he probably couldn’t accomplish both his goals single-handedly without someone else--probably Charles--getting hurt. So he grudgingly agreed that he should head for the throne room’s ante room and his wings while Raven got Charles out of the dungeon.

“In the spirit of cooperation…” Raven took the gag out of Moira’s mouth. “Will you run if we untie you?”

Moira glared at her. “You never had to tie me up to begin with.” She turned her glare to Erik. “Rather, you. What am I even doing here?”

Erik couldn’t bring himself to say it. He looked at Raven. She sighed and turned to Moira. “You might need to...kiss Charles.”

“Oh.” Moira frowned at Erik momentarily, then smirked. “Your kisses aren’t good enough, huh?”

Erik growled at her, although he suspected she didn’t know that her comment would cut quite as deeply as it did. She paled a little at his reaction. He was the horned monster of the forest she had been hearing tales about since she was a child, after all.

Raven decided that Moira was trustworthy enough, and she untied the brunette’s wrists. “Thank you,” Moira murmured, moving to stand on the far side of the group from Erik, who was still glaring at her.

“Alex,” said Erik. “Can I trust you three to keep Moira safe, until after sunset? She...may be Charles’ only hope.”

Alex stood up a little straighter. “Yes.”

“I’ll keep her safe too,” Sean said loudly. It had not escaped anyone’s notice that the youngest fairy brother had taken a fancy to Moira. Moira rolled her eyes at him as she rubbed her wrists.

**

Raven flew to the one ground-level window she knew led to the dungeon. She turned into a rat to scurry along the floors of the dungeon until she got to the queen’s cell and heard Charles’ voice coming from the adjacent cell. She turned back into a crow to fly into his cell through the bars on the door.

Charles turned at the sound of her wings. “Raven,” he said, as she transformed into her water sprite form. His voice was heavy with relief as he ran to hug her. “The King has kept my mother locked in here for years, and I think he expects to do the same to me--or worse.” He shivered. “Can you get us out?”

Both of them. Raven chewed on her lip. She had a vague plan in her mind of stealing a key from a guard to get Charles out, but getting both him and the queen out would be a lot harder. “Can we come back later for her? Erik has a plan to save you, but--” Charles’ face hardened when Raven mentioned Erik. He pressed his lips together and turned away from her.

“Why is he here? Hasn’t he done enough?”

Raven actually had complete sympathy with Charles for feeling the way he did about Erik, but she had a feeling Charles still didn’t have the whole story. “If he can get his wings back, he may be able to remove the curse. He thinks.”

Charles snorted. “His wings were cut off years ago, Raven. He’s lying to you.”

“Charles…” Raven sighed, looking at the ceiling. Time was an asset and the precious seconds were slipping by. “His wings are here, and they are--alive, I don’t know, fairy magic or something--”

“They are,” a quiet voice asserted from another cell. The queen. “The wings are alive and here.”

Charles hesitated. He looked at Raven for a moment before asking softly, “Do you know how they got here, mother?”

“Sebastian brought them here,” Emma said, her voice becoming icy. “Shortly before my father died. He said he killed the beast that bore them.”

_Sebastian._ Charles remembered Erik talking about that person. Even though he was angry at Erik, he felt a deeper anger for this Sebastian. “Who is Sebastian?”

Raven looked at Charles in surprise as the queen gently said, “He’s the King, Charles. Your father.”

“Gods,” Charles said. He felt faint. He thought he might be sick. The one thing that hadn’t made sense to him is why Erik would have cursed an infant...and now he knew. That infant was the child of the person who had violated Erik's trust so horribly--

“Charles,” Raven said firmly, facing him and putting both of her hands on his shoulders. “Erik believes that if he can get his wings back, he can lift the curse from you, but I need to get you out of here in case---well. I’m going to get a key; I’ll get you both out of here, somehow.”

Charles nodded, trying to even out his breathing and focus on the here and now. “Yes, please. Thank you, Raven.”

Getting a key turned out to be child’s play; the guard was asleep. Raven had prepared multiple schemes for any number of scenarios and she felt a little wasted as an asset now. She boldly walked as a human to the cell and unlocked first Charles’ and then Emma’s. “Ta-da,” she said, swirling the key ring on her finger.

Charles grinned at her as he slipped by her. “Very impressive, Ray-ray,” he said, invoking a childhood nickname. Her heart melted a little as she smiled at him. Looked like his blessings were still going strong, she thought fondly.

As the three of them crept by the sleeping guard up the dungeon stairwell, Raven hoped Erik’s part of the mission was going as well as hers. She looked out one of the narrow vertical slits that passed for a window and saw the sun beginning to sink in the sky. She urged the prince and the queen to climb a little faster.

**

Erik decided to enter using part of the underground pathway he remembered from many, many years before. It took him some time to find a way into it, but he made good time once he was underground. When he reached the final door, he pushed it open carefully, only to find himself face to face with a half dozen huge guards. He fought fiercely, but even his magic was ineffectual because he was physically and emotionally exhausted. He was subdued within minutes, and was dragged, bruised and bloody, to kneel before Shaw in the throne room.

“Erik,” said Shaw, his voice deceptively pleasant. “How typical for a fairy to be on his knees.”

Shaw’s guards roared with laughter at the joke as Shaw got closer. “I made a mistake, letting you live,” he said in words quiet enough that only Erik heard. “But then again, you made a mistake cursing my son.”

Erik closed his eyes for a moment, because at least that he could agree with. Shaw’s next words chilled him to his core. “I should have killed him, too, instead of expecting those incompetent fairies to make it happen.”

Erik’s head jerked and he glared at Shaw. Shaw looked back at him before stepping away. “Are my archers here yet?” he called to the guards.

“Almost, sir. They needed--it’s been years, sir,” a man tried to explain, only to be cut off by Shaw’s glare.

“Fine. At least secure him in preparation.” Shaw moved out of the way so a few men could roughly haul Erik to his feet and drape a net made of iron chains over him. Erik rolled his eyes.

“Iron, really?” he said. It was a human myth that fairies couldn’t abide iron - it was supposed to burn them, or something. Erik didn’t know where the myth came from, but even though the iron did nothing to his skin it was still a heavy and effective barrier between himself and freedom.

The archers finally arrived, a group of eight men who looked a combination of annoyed and terrified and sleepy. None of them were young men, and Erik thought there was a reason for that which he couldn’t quite remember.

“Death by firing squad,” Shaw was explaining pleasantly, but Erik tuned him out because he he realized his shoulders were itching and there was a thumping noise coming from a room just out of his sight.

“My wings,” he whispered.

Shaw stopped at his words, his face going pale. His head snapped up and in the direction of the thumping noise. “Archers at the ready,” the monarch yelled, turning around, his eyes wide and wild.

**

Raven and Charles and Emma were finding the castle surprisingly empty as they crept through the halls. “I can’t remember how to get out without flying,” Raven said, frustrated.

Emma smiled at her. “I’m glad to be of use, then.”

Emma took the lead and they followed her until they heard voices. Raven stopped her. “We’re trying to _avoid_ people,” Raven explained, exasperated.

“The only way out is through the throne room,” Emma whispered back. “It sounds like there are people in there, though.”

Raven changed into a rat for a moment to run ahead and check - and she blanched when she saw Erik in chains, as Shaw stood over him. She could hear a group of men nearby, muttering, but she didn’t need to look at them to know this was not a safe place to be. On the other hand--

Erik’s wings.

Raven was in a position to see the anteroom with the display case, which was bucking and jumping. It wasn’t within Erik’s line of sight, but Raven thought that if she could just get the case open, it looked like the wings would know what to do.

Her little rat heart pounding, Raven ran to the anteroom as fast as she could. She scurried up on top of the case but it was bucking so hard so was having trouble staying on it. She got one little paw inside the doors but it immediately got stuck.

She told herself not to panic, but Raven couldn’t think of anything that she could do. She would be seen by Shaw’s men instantly if she changed form to human, and she was about to fall if she didn’t. She tried to think of other forms she could take but the box was shaking her so hard she could hardly think. She felt her anxiety level rise and wanted to scream with frustration. Erik was about to be killed by Shaw and she couldn’t do anything to help.

**

Emma turned to Charles, her hand on her head. “Your friend is in trouble,”

Charles immediately thought of Erik. “Where is he?”

“Oh. I meant the girl who changes shapes,” Emma clarified, frowning like she was concentrating. “She’s stuck.”

“Stuck? Where? How?” All Charles knew is that she had gone to check out the throne room, and she had never come back.

“The wings,” Emma said. “She found the wings. All she needs is to get the case open; the wings will do the rest. But--she’s stuck.”

Charles took a deep breath. He knew Erik needed the wings. He knew it was dangerous, but before he could get too scared, he ran into the throne room. He immediately saw the case with the wings and although he heard the muttering of a group of men, he made a beeline for the wings. He knew he was a strong runner, and part of his mind relaxed. _Just get the case open,_ he thought, oddly detached, as he sprinted.

**

“Fire!” said Sebastian. Erik did the only thing he could--he dug deep into his reserves and lashed out with his magic, unpredictable and dangerous as it was, and pushed the arrows away from him. _At least Charles isn’t--_

Erik felt like the world was moving in slow motion as he watched Charles suddenly run into the throne room, behind the line of archers, towards the side anteroom that Erik could feel his wings in. Erik felt a split-second of relief that Charles was behind the archers, but horror filled him when he saw several arrows heading that way anyway, deflected by Erik’s own power.

“Charles!” Erik screamed as he watched an arrow hit Charles in the middle of his back, still seeing everything in slow motion. Charles arched in pain and fell forward, just out of Erik's line of sight, and Erik heard a loud crash.

Erik stood and tried to walk, but one of the arrows had pierced his thigh after all, and he was still weighed down with an iron net. He took three steps before he fell but it was enough to see that Charles had fallen on the case and cracked open the glass, and a bloodied but still moving human Raven was trying to yank her hand out from between the double case doors, which was still holding together enough to restrain the wings. Charles was lying still, unmoving, and Erik let out a yell of pure anguish at the sight.

Raven managed to yank open the case but she gasped and held her wrist which was hanging at an odd angle, as the wings flew out and towards Erik. Erik watched helplessly as she tripped and fell into several shards of glass and stopped moving.

His voice was hoarse from screaming and due to the injury to his thigh, he could no longer walk. The iron net effectively held him down as the wings flew to him, trying to reconnect, but thwarted by the net. Erik stared at his friends, feeling hope draining out of him, when he saw that Raven’s eyes were open and she was crawling towards him, using her elbow on the side where her wrist hung funny.

He worked his mouth but nothing came out. What was she going to do now, injured as she was? There was so much blood on her it was hard to see parts that weren’t bloody. Then suddenly there was a bloodied, blue-scaled dragon in front of him. Erik’s head fell back as he watched the huge dragon gently grasp the iron net in her teeth and lift it off him. "Now we're even," the dragon rumbled, in a deep and distorted version of Raven's human voice.

Erik’s wings, which had been fluttering around the iron net like annoying houseflies, found their way to his back and he felt the almost-forgotten feeling of his magic lining up and calming down.

Just as the archers let fly another round towards the dragon, the dragon disappeared, and in its place was a small black raven, sticky with blood, with some wing feathers pointing in an unnatural direction.

Erik stood tall and stretched his wings. The archers fell back, uniformly terrified now. He wanted and needed to take care of his friends, but first he needed to cut the head off the snake. He turned to Shaw. “Let’s make your dreams come true, Sebastian,” he said, as a wonderful, terrifying idea snaked its way into Erik’s mind. Shaw turned to run away from him but Erik wrapped a forearm around the monarch’s throat and lifted.

Shaw clutched desperately at anything he could to keep the pressure of Erik’s inner elbow from crushing his windpipe. All he could do was grip Erik’s arm fiercely as Erik flapped his strong wings, circling up and out a high-placed open window of the castle. He kept flapping, rising higher and higher.

He didn’t know if Shaw couldn’t speak in this position or just didn’t have anything to say, but Erik had a few things to say. “It turns out I could fly with you all along,” he said conversationally. “All I needed was the right motivation. It looks like wanting to kill you is the right motivation,” Erik said, mimicking Shaw’s pleasant tone from earlier, and lightly slapping the man on the face with his free hand.

It felt so good to fly again, the wind in his face, on his hair. He wondered if any part of Shaw was enjoying this and he hoped he wasn’t.

“Your worst fear about fairies, Sebastian, is that you would like fucking one,” Erik said, starting to tire from the extra weight. “I bet you did not expect to be killed by one.” And he unceremoniously released Shaw, and watched dispassionately as the his body hit rocks and tumbled, hard, down the side of a rocky mountain.

The horizon tilted crazily and began to get black around the edges as Erik realized he was losing blood from the arrow that was still in his thigh and he needed to set down soon. He noticed it was sunset and suddenly remembered Charles and Raven, probably both bleeding to death as he flew. A burst of adrenaline at this realization pushed the black trying to crowd his vision back enough that Erik could fly into the throne room just before collapsing. Just before passing out, he thought he saw men kneeling before a thin blond woman as she stood regally before them.

**

Erik came to lying on his back in a bed. He could feel that lying on his back was awkward, now, with his wings back. He opened his eyes and saw from the gray stone walls that he was in the castle.

“Charles,” he croaked, and someone nearby moved, startled. 

“He’s awake,” Angel called down the hall and other people rushed into the room. Erik struggled to sit up a bit and stretch his wings out the the sides so he wasn't lying on them. Ah, that was better. 

Alex, Sean, and Moira rushed into his room, followed by a slower-walking Queen Emma. 

"Where's Charles?" Erik said, louder, and then belatedly, "And Raven?"

The fairies looked at each other, seeming to be be fighting a silent battle to decide who would talk. 

"I'd like like to talk to your brother in private, please," Queen Emma said. Erik looked at her with narrowed eyes. He remembered her, from the day he had cursed Charles as an infant, and she seemed a lot older and more world-weary than he would have expected for a monarch. She was dressed in fine robes but they hung on her thin frame as if they were made for someone two sizes larger. Nevertheless, she stood tall and with her chin held high.

Then he remembered that Raven had said she knew that Charles and his mother were being held in the dungeon. He relaxed his opinion of her, slightly. She may hold herself like a monarch now but she had been imprisoned and at Shaw's mercy probably for years. 

"Prince Charles is unharmed, but asleep," she said, after a moment of silence. A little ice crept into her voice as she added, "As expected."

Erik closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He had failed, but at least Charles was alive. "Raven?" he managed to say.

The Queen's face softened, minutely. "She is not doing well. She lost a lot of blood, and she is too small for the veterinarian to be able to help her."

Veterinarian? Erik was confused until he remembered seeing the broken bird on the floor. If she was unconscious, of course she reverted to her natural form. 

The queen sat down the nearby chair and gave Erik a long and calculating look. "King Shaw died from an unfortunate accident," she said. "His body was recovered recently. It was a tragic ending for the good king."

Erik stared at her, not sure what she was getting at. Surely she knew Erik had killed him, and how much he deserved it. 

"I'm putting a lot of political capital on the line in defending that position," she continued, quieter, smoothing her skirt. "If anyone believed that you did it deliberately, you would be tried and put to death."

Erik felt his face curling into a sneer. "Are you threatening me?"

She gave him a long, hard look. "No. In fact, I appreciate what you did. I just hope that for your own well-being you are not a man who needs to brag about his accomplishments."

_To whom?_ Erik thought, the idea almost amusing. But to Emma he just said, "I'm not."

"Do you know why the king imprisoned me?" Emma asked, after a moment of silence. 

"Because you are a witch?" Erik said bluntly. 

Her mouth curled up the tiniest bit and she regarded him. "Well. Word does get around." She paused for a moment and then said, "My mother was a fairy."

Erik listened impassively. This had been brought up as a possibility, so he didn't find it that surprising. "And Sebastian hates--hated--fairies."

"Yes." Emma hesitated, as if not sure she should continue. Erik just looked at her until she sighed and started speaking again. "Fairy magic dilutes quite a bit over generations. My own magic is extremely limited. Charles is completely human."

The words stirred something in Erik that he didn't quite comprehend, but he just kept listening, not reacting. 

"My mother believed that fairies would disappear from the world in a few generations," Emma continued. "She taught me everything she could about the magic, the culture, and the history so that I could make sure the world doesn't forget."

Erik moved restlessly. His thigh ached and he remembered that he'd been shot there with an arrow. "What does this have to do with me?" Charles was asleep forever and Raven was dying and she wanted to give him a history lesson.

"You're worried about your friends," she said softly, eyes slightly unfocused, and Erik pressed his lips together. 

"You should be better able to channel your power now that you have your wings back, but I need for you to know that you can only save one of them."

Erik stilled, his jaw going slack. "What?"

"I don't think you would be able to break Charles' curse, even now, but if you tried and failed you certainly would not be able to heal Raven," The queen continued in a cool and even voice.

"I don't..." Erik shook his head. "I can heal Raven?"

"You should be able to, yes," Emma said, though she seemed to say it a little reluctantly. "If you haven't healed anyone before, I could--help, by guiding you with my mind. But it might cost you the chance to help Charles."

She was looking at him beseechingly, and Erik realized with horror that she was telling him he had to choose--and that despite her words, she definitely had a dog in this fight. She wanted him to save Charles. 

Of course he would save Charles, Erik thought. Except--what if he couldn't? What if he wasted his magic trying to while Raven died? What if he had to wait until Charles' True Love showed up, and woke him, and whisked him away...

Erik was clenching his fists without realizing it. "I need to see them," he said.

**

Charles looked disturbingly healthy. His cheeks were rosy, his lips red and plump, and he breathed evenly. "I wonder if he's dreaming," Erik murmured, unable to resist smoothing a lock of hair back from Charles' forehead. He felt perfectly warm and alive, like he would wake any moment. 

"He's not," the queen said with quiet certainty. "There's--nothing. When--if--he wakes, I think it will be like no time at all passed for him."

Raven, in contrast...

Erik's breath caught in his throat when he saw Raven's small bird body splayed out with her wings spread in a room adjacent to Charles'. He limped closer (the wound in his thigh was not completely healed). She looked--like a dead bird, like roadkill. Erik's stomach turned to think that this was his friend Raven. 

"She's alive, but she probably won't last the night," the queen whispered, reaching out a hand to touch some feathers very, very gently. "She gave her life trying to save me and Charles." 

_And me_ , Erik realized. He remembered seeing her crawling towards him when she couldn't even use her hand to crawl, on her elbow, covered in blood and determined to save him. He made a decision right then, not the decision he wanted to make, but the right thing to do for once in his accursed life. "I need to heal Raven. Tell me how."

The queen looked at him and then looked away quickly. He saw the sparkle of a tear in her eyes and felt them in his own. "I'm sorry," he whispered, to Charles as much as to her. But he realized Charles would have wanted this, which made his chest hurt just a little bit less. 

"It's easier if I show you," Emma said. And then Erik felt a strange sensation in his mind, like something cool was sliding around. He moved his hands over Raven and heard words in his mind; an ancient, flowery language that Erik didn't know but vaguely recognized as a very old fairy dialect. He spoke the words out loud. Some of the words seemed familiar, words spoken over his head when he was a baby, but most of them were just sounds to him. Nevertheless, he saw a purple glow begin to surround Raven's small body and the bird head tipped back as the rest of her body levitated. 

Erik felt something pouring out of him, weakening him, but also felt the assurance from Emma that this was normal. There had to be a trade of some kind, to heal so much, so fast; he would be very weak for a few days. 

Erik lost himself for a moment as the room swam and he stumbled back a step, steadied by the queen grasping his arm. When he recovered again he looked to Raven and saw an alert, healthy crow, sitting up and looking at him with a beady black eye. 

"She's alive," he murmured, happy, even though he felt like he might pass out. Then he frowned slightly as she stayed a bird. "Does this mean she can't--"

"She totally can," Raven said, suddenly switching into human form, utterly and shamelessly naked. She grinned at Erik, swinging her legs where they hung off the table she was sitting on. 

Erik grinned and the tears that had been threatening to fall since he first woken finally fell. "I've never been gladder to hear you be a smart-ass, Raven." 

She grinned back at him and then her smile slowly faded. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save Charles." She looked to the queen as well as she finished her sentence. 

The queen smiled with a forced brightness, tears shining in her eyes but not falling down her cheeks. "You may have saved us all, dear. Time will tell." Then she added, delicately, "Would you like to borrow some clothes?"

**

Erik needed to sleep, but he also needed to be near Charles. The queen solved the dilemma by ordering that a bed be put next to Charles so Erik could sleep there. He was too weak to do more than climb in it and stare at Charles as he drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke, his fairy siblings and Moira were there. "Sorry to wake you, but we're going to go back home now," Sean explained awkwardly. "We wanted to say goodbye."

Erik shook sleep off quickly. He still felt exhausted, but it was more like a horrible hangover than feeling like he was going to pass out. "Not yet, please. Moira, have you...?"

"...kissed Charles?" She finished, looking at him sadly. "Yes, I tried. Several times." She and everyone in the room looked over at Charles. "It didn't work."

"Do you love him?" 

Moira chewed her lip while she thought about that. "I've been thinking a lot about that for the past couple days. No, I don't think so. Not in the way you mean."

Erik shook his head, rejecting her answer. Of course she loved Charles; what wasn't to love? "I need to see you do it."

She gave him a look. "Kinky."

"Don't joke about this," he snapped. 

She sighed and rolled her eyes. She walked over to Charles and kissed him on the cheek, then stood back and looked at him expectantly. Nothing happened. She turned to Erik. "Well?"

He shook his head. "Try again. More--loving."

She gave him a look of disbelief and looked at Charles thoughtfully. She straddled his sleeping form and pressed a kiss to his red lips, turning her head to peer at Erik as she did so. He glared at her so she grabbed Charles' limp hands and pressed them to her breasts, still kissing him. 

"Enough," snapped Erik. Angel and Alex and Sean were trying to smother giggles and it enraged him. How could they joke about this?

"Get out," Erik snapped. He put his head down, willing himself to calm down. 

"Gods, Erik, you are an idiot, did you know that?" Moira said as she followed the fairies out the door. 

No, he wasn't an idiot, he reflected, turning to face Charles so he could watch the late afternoon sun light up his slack but beautiful face. He was something terrible, but he wasn't an idiot.

**

He stayed the night, of course. He couldn't stop looking at Charles and thinking how beautiful he was. _His blessings are holding out,_ Erik thought. 

Raven came in early the next morning, as a human, wearing a dress this time. 

"Are you gonna kiss him?" She demanded, as if she had asked the same question dozens of times already. 

Erik looked away from her. "No. Maybe. I haven't decided."

She held her hands open in a frustrated supplication. "Why? What's the problem?"

The problem. Erik had been turning it over in his head. "If I kiss him...and he doesn't wake up...what then?"

Raven didn't answer, just looking at him steadily. Erik continued. "I just--wait? For someone else to come along and fall in love with him? What kind of person would fall in love with him like this?"

"A necrophiliac?" Raven suggested brightly, then chuckled at Erik's scowl. "Erik, of course it's you! Who else could it be but you?"

Erik held his hands up helplessly. "You, maybe?" 

Raven snorted and then looked thoughtful. She approached Charles and planted what Erik had to admit looked like a very passionate kiss on his mouth, then stood back. They both held their breaths.

Charles stirred. His head moved a half-inch and he sighed.

Raven leaped back from the bed as if burnt. "Shit, shit, shit," she muttered under her breath. 

But Charles didn't move again. One soft exhale appeared to be what Raven's love was worth. 

Erik and Raven looked at each other. "That was a close one," Raven said. 

Erik felt the strangest feeling bubbling up inside him. He snorted as he looked at Raven and then he was laughing, loud and strong, in a way he hadn't for--years. Maybe he had laughed with Charles. He thought he had. 

Raven was chuckling despite herself, too.

When Erik finally finished laughing he sighed heavily and shook his head at Raven. "If you don't think there's a part of me saying, 'shit, shit, shit' then you're wrong."

A flicker of understanding went through her eyes. "Erik, you and Charles love each other. I've been around you both enough to know that."

"I know," he admitted softly. It was hard to say, even to himself, because he felt so unworthy of Charles. "I just think maybe that imaginary necrophiliac out there might be better for him than I am."

Raven stood with him a while in silence. "Well," she said presently, "it's certainly not True Love if you don't even want to give him the chance to wake up and make that decision for himself." Her words stung, but she squeezed his shoulder affectionately before she left. 

**

Erik drowsed, still weak and recovering his strength, until dusk arrived. He slowly came to to realized that everyone he knew was in the room with him. Angel, Alex, Sean, Moira, Raven and the queen. "What?" he said sleepily. 

"It's time, Erik," Raven said. "We miss Charles. You need to kiss him."

"I don't need to do anything," Erik snapped automatically, resentful of people telling him what to do. 

"A good monarch knows how to make hard decisions," Queen Emma said. "I had thought--and hoped--that you were capable of that."

The implication did not escape Erik's notice. "Are you trying to tempt me with power, Your Majesty?" He sat up in bed and took a step towards her, his horns and his wings looming, giving him more mass than he had ever had before. "Because that would be a mistake. I don't care about power. I don't care about anything except that man!" His voice raised as he spoke and he pointed behind him at Charles and Erik suddenly realized how much he missed Charles; the real Charles, the teasing, clever, and sometimes manipulative young man who had somehow become lodged in Erik's heart. Not this beautiful, breathing shell. 

"Get out," he said, looking at Charles, but talking to everyone else. Sean started to say something and Erik absentmindedly put up a spell that put a shimmering-purple transparent bubble of magic around himself and Charles. 

Erik walked closer and thought about the Charles he missed. Charles, who had caressed and loved his scars. Charles who had so sweetly and breathlessly asked Erik to fuck him. Charles, whom Erik had hurt, several times, because of his own fear and pain. 

What if Charles woke, and hated him? What if he became like his father? What if--Erik closed his eyes because this was the most painful thought of all--what if Charles only thought he loved Erik, and once he knew him better, he would come to his senses?

Charles was the bright, beautiful highlight of Erik's life. And Erik realized that he deserved to live his life, even if Erik's worst fears came true. 

Very slowly, Erik bent down and pressed a kiss to Charles' full, warm lips. 

Everyone else was still in the room, just outside the purple bubble of magic Erik had generated. Nobody breathed and there was absolute silence for almost a minute before--

Charles' eyelashes fluttered. 

Erik felt joy wash over him until Charles eyes' went wide and he screamed and leaped to his feet on the bed. 

"What--" Erik stepped back, holding his hands up and away from Charles. 

"Where am I?" Charles said wildly, looking at everyone with eyes that were not yet quite focused, standing on his bed. 

"You're in Westchester Castle," Erik said soothingly. "Please, calm down."

"I was--hit. In the back. And Raven--oh, gods, Raven--"

"I'm fine," Raven said stepping forward and slapping at the purple shimmering barrier. She gave Erik a look and he sheepishly cancelled the spell with a wave of his hand. "See, Charles? I'm fine. Erik healed me." She came closer and took his hand so he could climb down off the bed.

"Erik--your wings--" Charles was looking at him in wonder and amazement. Erik stretched a wing towards him and Charles pet the soft feathers delightedly. 

"But how did I get here?" Charles said, still confused. 

"You fell asleep," his mother said gently. 

Charles mouth formed an O of understanding, as he remembered the curse and its terms. "You woke me," he said to Erik. It was a statement, not a question. 

"I--Yes. I kissed you.” His heart was pounding, not expecting to be rejected, but prepared.

"Oh, yes, although I was hoping it would be Raven," Charles said, winking at Erik, as Raven shrieked "What!" and then slapped him on the arm when she realized he was kidding. 

Erik realized that, as usual, Charles had figured out a little bit more than Erik had given him credit for. "I love you," he said to Charles, seriously. 

The room seemed to magically clear of people except for Charles and Erik very quickly. Charles smiled at him. "Is that because I'm beautiful and always in a good mood?" he said lightly, but there was a flash of pain in his eyes that Erik knew all too well. 

"No," Erik said. "It's because you are compassionate, charming, funny, clever, and determined." He kissed Charles on the nose. "But being beautiful isn't hurting you any."

Charles gave Erik a look that encompassed all those traits. "I love you too," he breathed, resting the side of his head on Erik's chest. 

"I hope that's true...but it's okay if it's not," Erik said, awkwardly. When Charles gave him a confused frown, he said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not sure what there is to love about me. I'm--not good--inside." _Not like you._

"Erik, I have loved you since I was fifteen years old, from the time I found you grieving for Hank," Charles said. "You taught me chess, and about the world. You engaged me in a way nobody ever had before. Yes, you hurt me--" Erik squeezed Charles tightly to his chest "--but I understand now so much more about why you did that."

"It's not enough," Erik said. He heard what Charles said and to him it was distinctly lacking in substance. Charles could do better than Erik. 

Charles gave him a searching look. "Maybe it wouldn't have been, before, Erik. I won't tell you that I haven't had my doubts. But--you saved Raven," he said.

Erik frowned. "How do you know about that?"

"My mother," Charles tapped his temple with his index finger. "She was being modest about her abilities. She has been filling in gaps for me as we've been talking." His eyes widened suddenly and he pulled back to look Erik in the eye. "She wants us to rule Westchester when she retires."

This was all moving very fast for Erik. "I don't want--"

Charles frowned and waved away his objection. "Never mind, let's talk about it later. Right now--" Charles put both of his hands on Erik's face and kissed him, a wet, demanding kiss full of filthy promise. "Right now, I'd like to explore the potential benefits of having sex somewhere that we actually have access to indoor plumbing." 

Erik's cock filled with blood at about the same rate that his heart filled with joy. "Gods, Charles, _yes_."

**

Prince Charles did eventually become King Charles, and Erik his Prince Consort. It was many years before Queen Emma Frost retired (she never remarried), giving Erik and Charles plenty of time to travel the known world and spread tales about the fae folk. Genosha was wrapped into Westchester and eventually people forgot that the two countries had ever been separate lands. But the stories kept getting told, generation after generation, and so in a way there is a little fairy in all of us. 

THE END.


End file.
